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Meat from thousands of horses may have found its way into the food chain when European rules should have kept it out, according to a major international fraud investigation that this week led to seven raids in the Netherlands.
What investigators say happened
The Belgian judicial authorities led the investigation, which examined more than 1,000 horses. According to investigators, criminals used forged horse passports and manipulated microchips to get around the rules to make more money.
The system is meant to work like this: a horse taken to a slaughterhouse must have a microchip, which records information such as whether the animal has been given medication. Under EU rules, if it has, its meat may not be processed for human consumption, because residues of veterinary medicines in horsemeat can pose health risks to people.
The gang allegedly got around this by trading sport horses that received all kinds of medication, as though they were ordinary slaughter horses, since that was more lucrative. According to the Flemish broadcaster VRT, even a sport horse of little value can still fetch around 1,500 euros as a slaughter horse. Investigators also say criminals sold old horses with false passports as young horses, so buyers paid a higher price.
According to the European police agency Europol, the criminals undermined EU rules designed to safeguard both animal welfare and food safety.
The raids
The enforcement action was substantial. This week, around 200 officers from the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Ireland carried out 24 raids in total. Seven of those were in the Netherlands, spread across the provinces of Limburg, Zuid-Holland, Noord-Brabant, Utrecht and Zeeland, with the Dutch food and product safety authority (NVWA) also involved in the investigation.
Authorities have arrested three people in Belgium. As with any suspects, they have not been convicted, and the investigation and the courts will determine what happened. During the searches, Belgian police said, “a considerable number of horses” were seized, and more than 100,000 euros in cash was found.
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An unanswered question
One thing investigators cannot yet say is where all the meat went. They are still trying to trace where the animals ended up, and whether their meat was in fact eaten. That uncertainty is central to the food-safety dimension of the case: the concern is not that anyone is known to have fallen ill, but that meat which should have been excluded from human consumption may have been sold and eaten without buyers knowing.
Echoes of an earlier scandal
For many in Europe, horsemeat fraud is not a new phenomenon. In 2013, a continent-wide scandal erupted when horsemeat was found in products labelled as beef, including ready meals sold by major supermarkets. That case was primarily about mislabelling, meat passed off as something it was not, whereas this investigation centres on animals that should never have entered the food chain at all because of the medicines they had been given. Yet both cases point to a situation where inventory management and quality control is supposed to guarantee the exact products we expect to end up on our plates, where fraud breaksthe chain.
Horsemeat fraud is not new to the Netherlands either. Dutch authorities have pursued several cases in recent years, including earlier investigations into the illegal slaughter of racehorses and into tax fraud in the horse trade, a sign that the profits to be made continue to attract criminal interest.
For now, the investigation continues, along with efforts to determine how far the fraudulently traded meat travelled, and whether it reached consumers.