25 defendants tried for selling horses from a Sanofi-Pasteur laboratory for consumption
The animals had been used in the manufacture of anti-rabies, anti-tetanus or anti-venom serums, their meat was strictly prohibited for human consumption. The trial opens this Monday, before the criminal court of Marseille.
Strictly excluded from human consumption, horses culled from a Sanofi-Pasteur farm-laboratory had nevertheless ended up in butcher shops: in this vast case of horsemeat fraud, 25 defendants are on trial from Monday before the criminal court of Marseilles.
“Deceit on the versatile quality of a commodity”, “false in an administrative document”, among other heads of reference: for three weeks, cattle dealers, meat wholesalers and veterinarians will have to explain themselves on these “fraudulent practices of large scale” noted by the investigating judge in charge of this case at the Marseille public health center.
On the bench of the civil parties, the victims: Sanofi-Pasteur, but also the national order of veterinarians, consumer associations and butchers.
10 euro per head
Opened in 2012, on the basis of an anonymous letter, the investigation showed in particular that horses from the Sanofi-Pasteur farm-laboratory in Alban-la-Romaine (Ardèche) had been taken to the Narbonne slaughterhouse. (Aude), but also in those of Verona and Barcelona, mainly on behalf of Patrick Rochette, a Narbonnais meat wholesaler supplying around twenty butchers in the South of France.
These animals having been used in the manufacture of anti-rabies, anti-tetanus or anti-venom serums, their meat was however strictly prohibited for human consumption.
“Main actor in this fraud”, according to the magistrate, Patrick Rochette recovered these horses from the company Equid’Aniel, directed by Fabrice Daniel, trader and farmer in the Gard.
Exclusive supplier of Sanofi-Pasteur, the latter sold reformed trotters from horse racing to the farm-laboratory, at a price of 1,000 to 1,100 euros excluding tax. At the end of their exploitation for the manufacture of serums, these animals, intended for a peaceful retirement, were retroceded to him 10 euros per head.
During the following transactions, the mention “equidae definitively withdrawn from slaughter for human consumption” was removed from the identification documents and the medication treatment sheets of the horses. Then they were resold, slaughtered, to end up on the shelves of butcher shops.
A “significant absence of toxicological risk”
Of the 185 reformed horses from Sanofi whose traces the investigators found, 80 had been sold to Patrick Rochette, 300 to 800 euros per head. This chevard negotiated 200 horses per month and imported and exported from or to Spain, Italy and Poland.
According to the investigators, the Sanofi-Pasteur animals had large lymph nodes and cysts in the neck, due to repeated injections. Stigmas that the slaughterhouse specialists cannot fail to see.
However, an expert report demonstrated a “significant absence of toxicological risk” for consumers of this meat, even raw.
Initially indicted for deception, the veterinarian and three technicians from the Narbonne slaughterhouse, of which Patrick Rochette was one of the main shareholders, were finally dismissed.
If there was “a lack of diligence, even a deficiency” in the control of the horses, “it is not established that (these personnel) acted in bad faith”, noted the investigating judge.
Eight other veterinarians working for horse dealers and touts will, however, be tried for complicity in deception and forgery in an administrative act. Most admitted to providing customers with blank drug treatment slips, or to attesting to the health of animals intended for export without even seeing them.
So many embezzlements which, according to the prosecution, made it possible to blur any traceability of the meat.
In connection with Patrick Rochette, two Spanish traders would have allowed the slaughter in Spain of horses that could not be slaughtered in France because of these irregularities in their identification documents.
This trial comes a few months after a precedent which had seen 18 French, Belgian and Dutch defendants compared, for fraud and deception based on a massive documentary fraud of equine passports, again to bring prohibited meat into the food industry. human. In this case, judged in June, the Marseille Criminal Court delivered its judgment on Wednesday.