James Warren
A CRIMINAL organisation dedicated to the selling of out of date and damage meat to restaurants and takeaways across Spain has been busted by Malaga police.
Officers raided a warehouse at an undisclosed location near Malaga City that worked in distributing relabelled and frozen meat products.
The warehouse was connected to a group of companies, 10 in total, that are being investigated for the illegal practices.
According to the police report, the warehouse was used to manipulate the labels on food, changing the expiry and best before dates and altering the origin locations.
One the meat was processed it was then shipped using unregistered carriers to local distribution points in Madrid, Malaga, Toledo and Getafe.
In total, 122,000 kilograms were seized of mainly chicken, veal, rabbit and pork alongside 14 arrests for crimes of belonging to a criminal group, food safety violations, fraud and forgery.
The raids were carried out after an investigation by the Directorate of Hygiene, Food Safety and the Ministry of Health of Madrid in collaboration with the local councils of Malaga, Toledo and the Junta de Andalucia.
This isn’t the first time that criminals have tried to pass off expired meat to businesses.
In 2019, three men were arrested in Mallorca for selling salmonella infected meat from a warehouse on the Poligono de Marratxi.
Over 50 tonnes were seized that were ready to be sold to the public and the warehouse was closed down after officers described the scene as ‘nauseating’.
