The fraud is "terrible, economic, and sanitary." It is as well as Didier Guillaume, the minister of Agriculture, was presented Friday in a scandal that has exceeded the borders of Poland: the health services of the ministry say they have discovered the existence of 795 kg of meat Polish spoiled, located in "the nine companies" the agri-food sector French. It was not known yet their identity.

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For now, 650 pounds have been found by the health services of the ministry in the business of transformation "cheated", said the Directorate general of food (DGAL). Among these 650 kilos, 500 kilos were destroyed and 150 kilos were sold to the consumers via particular meat, has been know by the end of the day the ministry of Agriculture. "Ministry teams are being mobilized to continue the research on the 150 kilos remaining", one can read in a press release. No meat fraudulent was not, at this stage, found in the circuit of the great distribution. "All of our teams the DGAL are on the move", was keen to reassure the minister, recalling that "the traceability of products when they arrive in France works pretty well".

Several other countries of the European Union, including Portugal, Romania and Slovakia, have announced that it has identified, recovered, and began to destroy the meat of beef from illegal slaughter.

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This announcement comes the day after the opening of an investigation in Poland by the public prosecutor in Ostroleka, in the north-east of the country, about the slaughter and marketing of cattle sick by a local slaughterhouse, to Kalinowo. The latter was closed and an investigation initiated on its owner. The origin of the scandal is a journalist, Patryk Szczepaniak, who for the account of the tv channel TVN24 was made to hire them in the slaughterhouse. After three weeks of immersion, its images shot in hidden camera have been released: we see cattle being dragged to the ground, the rope at the neck, clearly sick. According to the journalist, the animals are killed clandestinely, at night, without any veterinary control. On the images, the workers of the slaughterhouse, remove the evidence of the poor condition of the cows, such as pressure ulcers or tumors indicating that they were suffering and lying on the side for days.

"2.7 metric tons of spoiled meat have been sold to countries of the EU"

Pawel Niemczuk, head of veterinary services Polish

The case is all the more serious because it affects all of Europe, Poland is a large exporter of meat on the continent. On the approximately 560.000 tonnes of beef produced in the country each year, 85% of which are exported, of a value in excess of $ 1.5 billion.

The head of veterinary services, Polish, Pawel Niemczuk, has announced that 2.7 tonnes of spoiled meat have been sold to countries members of the EU, namely Finland, Hungary, Estonia, Romania, Sweden, Spain, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Germany, Latvia, the Czech Republic and France. "Distribution lists are established", he assured adding that the meat would be quickly removed from the commercial circuit, and that in some countries the lots had already been destroyed.

The president of the Polish Association of producers of livestock to meat Jerzy Wierzbicki recognized that "the Polish market is concerned, on the whole chain", and that the price of beef fell about 7% compared to the beginning of the week." On the other hand, he denies that these cows were sick. According to him, to look at the pictures, "they were cows contusionnées, who were not able to leave the truck alone. Such cows should not be led to the slaughter but shall be killed at the breeder by a person qualified to do so."

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In Poland, even, 7 tons of the spoiled meat have been distributed in some twenty points of sale. The minister of Agriculture of poland on his side recognized that a fraud had been committed, while stressing its character as "isolated". "We are dealing with a pathology: on a site, from sick cows were slaughtered without the knowledge and without the green light from the veterinary", he summarized. The european commissioner for Health and food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis, has for its part reported that a team of inspectors would be onsite Monday and would remain there until Friday, while calling on the Polish authorities to ensure compliance with the european standards.

This scandal health is far from being the first in Europe. Among the most well-known is the case of the horse meat in 2013, in which the trial has recently opened in France. In this scandal food, 4.5 million ready-made meals, including the firm Spanghero in France, supposed to contain beef were actually made from horse meat. A case which had brought to light the complexity and opacity of supply chains and processing of meat products on the continent. In fact, the meat had been purchased in Romania, which is stored in the netherlands, by an intermediary in cyprus and then redistributed in Europe.

It is also interesting to the scandal over former says of the "mad cow" disease, appeared in 1986 in the United Kingdom. Ten years later, the european Union decreed an embargo on meat british, finally lifted to the european level in 1999 and by France in 2002. This outbreak resulted in 224 deaths in the world, the sick cows passing it to the man, a neurodegenerative disease called "Creutzfeldt-Jakob".