A French investigation into the source of horsemeat in frozen readymeals across Europe has suggested French company Spanghero knowingly sold horsemeat labelled as beef.
French minister of consumer affairs, Benoit Hamon, told a press conference on Thursday (14 February) that there were at least “strong suspicions” that the company was a guilty of a fraud, from which it had profited to the tune of €550,000. Some 750 tonnes of meat had been falsely labelled over a period of several months, he added.
He said investigations had revealed that Spanghero had been supplied with horsemeat, labelled as such, from Romania and then sold it on to Comigel, the French company that made the Findus frozen lasagne and other own-label ready meals that have tested positive for horse in recent weeks.
Hamon said there was no reason to doubt the good faith of the Romanian supplier of the horse meat.
The minister also suggested Comigel was guilty of negligence. He said the company’s labelling did not conform with French legislation because it had failed to give the precise geographical location of where the meat was from and where it was killed. He added that during the defrosting, Comigel should have noticed that the meat it had been supplied with was not the same colour as beef.
Spanghero denied the accusations of the minister in the French press and claimed that it thought it was selling beef. Nobody at Comigel was reachable for comment before publication.
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