MARSEILLE: A French court on Wednesday handed down sentences of up to two years in jail to 15 people accused of running a Europe-wide horsemeat trading network involving products not cleared for human consumption.
The defendants, including French, Belgian and Dutch nationals, were accused of violating EU sanitary rules governing the horsemeat trade, and of forging official documents between 2010 and 2015.
That led prosecutors to file criminal charges of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, as well as misleading consumers and endangering their health.
The trial, which opened in the southern French city of Marseille in June, was the biggest horsemeat scandal since 2013, when millions of ready-to-eat meals were withdrawn from stores across Europe after they were found to contain horsemeat instead of only beef as indicated on the label.
Horsemeat is typically cheaper than beef and has long been part of diets across European countries, including France, but its popularity has waned in recent decades and its production is strictly regulated.
The main suspect, 58-year-old Belgian Jean-Marc Decker, was sentenced to two years in jail for supplying the network with horses whose meat was unfit for consumption. He was given an additional two-year suspended sentence as well as a 100,000 euro ($107,000) fine, and is banned from working in the horsemeat industry for five years.
The court found that Decker had overseen the slaughter of around 500 horses in southern France whose papers and veterinary records had been forged.
“This case brought to light a structure that allowed the sale of a large number of horses that had been excluded from the food chain,“ court president Celine Ballerini said.
Dutch trader Stijn De Visscher, considered to have played a similarly important role in the scam, was handed the same jail sentence but a lesser fine of 75,000 euros.
Georges Gonzales, manager of the horsemeat wholesale company Equi’d Sud, was sentenced to a year in prison with a further three years suspended, a fine and a professional ban, for his “especially important role” in the slaughterhouse operation.
Twelve of the 18 defendants were given lesser sentences, and three were cleared of all charges.
The verdict comes only days after a separate horsemeat scandal went to trial, also in Marseille, in which 25 people are accused of butchering horses from the pharmaceutical industry and selling their meat even though it was unfit for human consumption.
The main defendant in that trial is a meat wholesaler, Patrick Rochette, but several others including vets, dealers and butchers also face charges over what investigators called “large-scale fraudulent practices”. - AFP
