Following Europol raids on illegal horse meat trade: foodwatch demands transparency for consumers
- Horsemeat
- Transparency and food safety
Following raids on a Europe-wide horse meat trafficking scheme, the international consumer organisation foodwatch is calling on the competent authorities to make public where and when this meat was sold – in which countries, in which products, and over what period. Horses unfit for human consumption had been slaughtered and have entered the food chain. The case became public yesterday, when Europol reported raids in four European countries.
"Consumers have a right to know what they have been eating. Where did this meat end up, in which products, and for how long? As long as the authorities stay silent, doubt spreads and trust erodes", said Ingrid Kragl from foodwatch France. "This is a case of fraud involving the obfuscation of meat traceability and the introduction into our food chain of horse meat unfit for human consumption. It is not known in what form it was consumed, nor whether it ended up in processed products. It may even have been exported. And above all: how long has this scheme been going on? We have a right to know!"
On 10 September, Europol reported that 200 officers had carried out 24 raids in Belgium, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. More than 1,000 horses are at the centre of the case. Their identities had been falsified through the trafficking of microchips, so that the same animals could be registered for slaughter several times over. Among them were leisure and racehorses treated with medication, which must never enter the food chain. The Belgian authorities identified the irregularities in the horses' identity documents and led the European investigation.
Thirteen years after the huge horse meat scandal of 2013, the fraud continues, criticises foodwatch. The scheme exploits well-known weaknesses. There is still no single European database allowing member states to verify a horse's identity across borders. Germany, for example, keeps its national database closed, according to foodwatch’s information, while France has opened its own. Inspections are understaffed across Europe, and penalties remain derisory: sometimes a few months in prison for schemes worth millions. foodwatch is calling on decision-makers to finally treat food fraud as a political priority.