Local suppliers bridle at fraud allegations as European horsemeat scandal mounts

Romania’s horsemeat exports have been riding high over the past few years, amounting to about EUR 12 million in 2012. But now, local producers and the Romanian meat industry as a whole are saddled with huge uncertainty, after having been caught up – undeservedly, they say – in a Europe-wide scandal involving fraudulent labeling of horsemeat, spurring politicians to race to their defense.

By Simona Bazavan

“Appalling” and “completely unacceptable” were some of the words used in the British media after horsemeat was found in processed meat products labeled as containing only beef. The scandal soon spread outside Great Britain to as many as 16 EU member states, triggering both national and EU investigations and an inflamed debate on food safety and traceability.

Some 3,000 km away, in Romania, companies exporting horsemeat and other products found themselves dragged into the scandal. The products initially found to contain horsemeat were manufactured by French company Comigel for Findus UK, with the meat allegedly coming from two Romanian abattoirs, according to the French authorities. The two local suppliers were later indentified as Carmolimp and Doly Com.

The horsemeat contamination was not an error, but part of a criminal conspiracy in which suppliers passed off horsemeat as beef in order to benefit from the price difference, said the French agriculture minister.

Read more about

Restart Energy has completed a solar power plant for Romtextil worth more than half a million euros

read more

The fraud, however, was not committed in Romania, said local authorities and industry representatives.

No violation of rules or standards had been found at the two Romanian abattoirs alleged by the French authorities to have supplied horsemeat labeled as beef, said the Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta last week, adding that the country was not willing to accept the role of the “usual suspect”.

Romania – top horsemeat exporter

Romania’s horsemeat exports amounted to about EUR 12 million in the first eleven months of 2012, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics. Some 20 abattoirs are authorized to slaughter horses in the country.

“Up until this scandal, Romania has been selling horsemeat in the EU for over ten years with no incidents so far,” said representatives of the Romanian Meat Industry Association (ARC).

Romania is estimated to have been the ninth largest horsemeat exporter in the world in 2011. The top eight exporters were Belgium, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Poland, France, Holland and Uruguay.

‘Stop horsing around’, nags Ponta

“It is very clear that the French company had no direct contact with Romanian companies and it should be determined – for the sake of credibility at EU level – where this fraud was committed and who is to blame,” said Ponta in press conference last week. “I do not believe that Romania, while being transparent and observing all standards, can and should accept being the usual suspect.”

Present at the same press conference, Romania’s EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos, added, “The European Commission has no proof so far to incriminate a state or a company.” He later commented that rules regarding food traceability are the same for all EU member states and that the Romanian authorities had demonstrated transparency on the matter and responded quickly to the crisis.

From the very beginning, representatives of Carmolimp denied the allegations which they said were an “unprecedented attack on the local meat industry”.

“Throughout 2012 Carmolimp has not exported beef so the mislabeling of horsemeat as beef wouldn’t have been possible. Also, we consider Spanghero and Comigel’s attempts to blame the situation on Romanian producers shameful to say the least. If horsemeat left Romania, it could only have been labeled as such. If the French processor confused the two, it must have been the first day it had ever processed meat!” said Carmolimp representatives.

The ARC, too, stressed there was no proof that the meat fraud had been committed in Romania and the matter had to be clarified as soon as possible so that the local meat industry did not suffer from the incident. The recent scandal is a highly sensitive issue for the Romanian agricultural sector, given that an eight-year pork export ban was imposed locally in 2003, due to swine flu.

Sorin Minea, head of the Romanian food industry federation Romalimenta, also insisted that the local producers were not responsible for selling horsemeat mislabeled as beef and that the fraud was most likely committed by middlemen traders further along the supply chain – a rather complicated supply chain as it was later revealed.

French officials previously said the meat processed in France came from a Cypriot trader, who had bought it from a Dutch food trader who got the meat from two Romanian abattoirs.

On Thursday it was revealed that the main suspect in the scandal was a Dutch company, Draap Trading Ltd, whose manager, Jan Fasen, told British newspaper The Guardian that his company had indeed bought a batch of horsemeat from two Romanian abattoirs which was later sold to a French processor. The meat however, was labeled as horsemeat when it left for France, claimed Fasen who also denied that his company was under the radar in the scandal. However, according to Dutch radio NOS, if Draap Trading committed the fraud it wouldn’t have been a first.

The company, which is owned by an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands according to the Guardian, was found guilty in early 2012 of having forged documents and passed off South American horsemeat as halal Dutch beef.

Draap Trading sold meat to French firm Spanghero, which sold it onto Comigel which in turn sold ready meals to Findus UK. Draap spelt backwards is the Dutch word for horse.

 Heading towards the finishing line

Romania’s agriculture minister Daniel Constantin said last Wednesday, at the end of an emergency meeting in Belgium with authorities from France, Romania, Holland, Luxembourg and Britain, that data from the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) confirmed that horsemeat leaving Romania had not been mislabeled.

He added that Romania was eagerly awaiting the final conclusion of the inquiry conducted by the European Commission, as the local meat industry was already starting to suffer from the fallout. “I have talked with several exporters and they told me that they are already being dropped by clients on the European market, which will lead to lower prices and, implicitly, losses,” said Constantin, according to Agerpres neswire.

While the crisis is not over and a final conclusion has yet to be made public, Ponta suggested on Thursday that the spotlight had been turned away from Romania.

However, had Romania assumed the role of the “usual scapegoat” and not fought back immediately to counter the initial suspicions, the effect on local agriculture “would have been worse than the 2012 drought”, he said, during a visit to the Biofach World Organic Trade Fair in Nuremberg where Romania was selected country of the year.

simona.bazavan@business-review.ro