In Marseille, industry professionals sentenced for illegally slaughtering 500 horses – Liberation
Cold meat
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With the complicity of veterinarians, one of the largest European horse dealers delivers animals that are “unfit for consumption” to the Alès slaughterhouse.
At the Marseille Criminal Court, 2023 will be the year of the horse. While the court has been considering since Monday on a massive horsemeat fraud case involving 25 professionals in the sector in the region of Narbonne (Aude), a judgment has just fallen this Wednesday for a similar case judged in June, with the epicenter, this time, the slaughterhouse of Alès (Gard). Penalties of up to two years in prison were pronounced against fifteen people, convicted of having been introduced into the human food chain of meat theoretically unfit for consumption.
The two stories echo each other, both in the modus operandi and in the context: that of the 2010s. At the time, Europe imposed new regulations on its member countries for the identification of equines. In order to circumvent the legislation, which provides in particular for the identification of all horses, the players in the sector have falsified these equine “passports”, in particular by replacing the drug sheet which lists the treatments received by the animal.
The Belgian Jean-Marc Decker, 58, one of the biggest European horse traders, receives the heaviest sentence: four years in prison, two of which are suspended, accompanied by a fine of