The trial of a vast European horsemeat scam began on Tuesday in Marseilles, in the south-east of France, for three weeks, with a major Belgian horse trader as the main suspect.
Jean-Marc Decker, a 58-year-old Belgian suspected of being the “pivot” of this “vast international horse traffic”, is being prosecuted for introducing animals unfit for consumption into the food chain.
Seventeen other defendants, including three Belgians and two Dutch, are tried alongside him before the criminal court.
Horse dealers, touts or veterinarians, they are notably prosecuted for fraud and complicity in organized fraud, as well as for deception endangering human health. Between 2010 and 2015, they would have committed numerous breaches of European regulations concerning horses imported from countries of the European Union.
Fifties or sixties for the most part, several suppliers of Mr. Decker are implicated for having supplied him with animals “unfit for consumption”, thanks to false documents blurring the traceability of the animals.
Some would even have deceived the former owners of the animals promising them a peaceful end of life for their horses and not the slaughterhouse.
The only legal person prosecuted in this case is a wholesale horse meat company in Alès, in the Gard (South). Equi’d Sud and its manager Georges Gonzales are accused of “indifference vis-à-vis the health imperatives governing his profession”.
This company, which supplied 80 retailers in the south of France, falsely led to the belief that the meat was of French origin.
” Work overload “
The trial, scheduled until June 24, entered the heart of the case on Tuesday afternoon with the appearance of the official veterinarian of the municipal slaughterhouse of Alès, where the investigation had started in 2013.
He is accused of having allowed horses unfit for human consumption to be slaughtered while he had been in charge of animal control since 2011, with the responsibility of directing them to slaughter for consumption or euthanize before rendering. This particularly concerns animals from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Poland.
The now retired 67-year-old spoke of a context of “work overload” and acknowledged certain “errors”, explaining that he had used “common sense” to justify his choices in the face of non-harmonised and complex regulations and control systems between European countries.
“Laws are made with rules; we can find them not adapted to practical cases but where are you going to put the limit? “, retorted the president of the court Claire Ballerini, recognizing “a wavering” in the application of European rules by the French authorities.
Some years, up to 25% of the horses brought by Jean-Marc Decker have been slaughtered, despite their “fraudulent” status, recalled the representative of the public prosecutor’s office Guillaume Bricier. A total of 473 horses were slaughtered while excluded from the food chain.
Aline Oudin, former owner of a horse that she had entrusted in 2013 to one of the defendants, with a view to “offering him a happy retirement”, appeared at the hearing on Tuesday after having traveled from the Meurthe-et-Moselle, in the east of the country, to file a written civil party application.
“They fooled the owners, they fooled the consumers, they fooled everyone,” she accused AFP on the eve of her hearing. Fifteen days after entrusting her horse, she learned that he had been shot.
