AN ORGANISED criminal network is now thought to be behind the horse meat scandal which has hit food firms across Europe.
The massive fraud was blown open by the tiny Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAl), which carried out random tests on beef products late last year. It exposed the massive profits made by criminal suppliers out to make a quick buck with fake food. Horse meat trades for up to €700 a ton while beef commands €3,000, leaving a healthy profit for shadowy importers and agents willing to cash in.
Following the lead set by the FSAI, French investigators immediately launched an investigation which led to a supplier in the south of the country.
Caught
It had imported 750 tons of horse meat worth €525,OOO from Romania which became relabelled as beef, making it worth €2.25 million
The transaction was organised through a broker who used offshore companies previously linked 10 convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, according to reports. The detection of horse meat in processed foods in Ireland started a series of tests right across Europe.
It's not the first time Ireland has been caught up in a fake-food scandal. Former Gaiway All-Ireland hurler Pearse Piggott escaped jail after it emerged he supplied eggs to a firm relabelling his produce as organic.
Keith Owen was jailed for three years for running the seam, in which 100 million eggs were packaged and he made €3million. Charges of conspiracy against Piggott were ordered to "lie on file" after the prosecution opted not to proceed against him and two other accused.
Last week, fruit and veg importer Paul Begley had his original six-year sentence for smuggling garlic reduced to two years. He had imported Chinese garlic into the country labelled as apples in a bid to evade tax.
A single lorry load could net as much as €20,000 in extra profits for the smugglers. Two years before Begley was caught, officials ran a European-wide Operation Wasabi, in which 2,000 shipping containers were targeted in a bid to crack down on mislabelled fruit and veg.
But the biggest food scandal in Europe has been the supply of olive oil marketed as being extra virgin Italian.
Expensive
Italy uses and exports more olive oil than it produces so it imports from Spain, the EU's biggest producer. Cheap Spanish oil is often found to have been relabelled and sold off as a more expensive Italian variety. Europe's worst food scandal happened in 1981 when up to 1,000 people died in Spain after cooking oil was tainted with industrial rapeseed oil, used to dilute regular cooking oil, and then sold to the public.
Other favourite seams included 'honey laundering', in which honey from one country, usually Chinese, is passed off as being local.
The packaging of farmed salmon as wild salmon has also been detected across the world. Food safety is a huge issue in the developing world and in emerging countries such as Indian and China.
The growth in middle-class shoppers has suppliers cutting corners in a bid to cash in. In 2008, six children died and nearly 1,000 were hospitalised in China after melamine was added to baby formula to apparently increase protein content. Chinese manufacturers have also been caught adding hormones and tannery effluent to formulas.
