25 defendants tried in Marseille

Cattle dealers, meat wholesalers and veterinarians: 25 defendants are tried before the criminal court, from Monday, January 9, in the case of laboratory horses that ended up in butchery.

For three weeks, they will have to explain themselves to these “large-scale fraudulent practices” noted by the investigating judge in charge of this file at the Marseille public health center.

An investigation opened in 2012 on the basis of an anonymous letter showed that horses from the Sanofi-Pasteur farm-laboratory in Alban-la-Romaine, in Ardèche, had been taken to slaughterhouses in Narbonne (Aude), Verona (in Italy) and Barcelona (in Spain). The linchpin of this scam involving nearly 200 animals would be Patrick Rochette, a Narbonnais meat wholesaler who then supplied around twenty butchers in the south of France.

Horses normally excluded from human consumption

However, these horses, having been used in the manufacture of anti-rabies, anti-tetanus, or anti-venom serums, were normally strictly excluded from human consumption. However, an expert report demonstrated a “significant absence of toxicological risk” for consumers of this meat, even raw.

“Main actor in this fraud”, according to the magistrate, Patrick Rochette recovered the horses from the company Equid’Aniel, directed by Fabrice Daniel, trader and farmer in the Gard. This exclusive supplier of Sanofi-Pasteur sold reformed horse racing trotters at the farm-laboratory for €1,000 to €1,100 excluding tax. Then, at the end of their exploitation for the manufacture of serums, these animals intended for a peaceful retirement were retroceded to him 10 € per head.

Fabrice Daniel then resold them at a price varying from 300 to 800 € to Patrick Rochette. During the following transactions, the mention “equidae definitively withdrawn from slaughter for human consumption” was removed from the identification documents and medication treatment sheets for the horses. Then they were resold, slaughtered, to end up on the shelves of butcher shops.

Fraud chain

A veritable chain of fraud had been formed. Creation of false documents, modification of existing ones, chipping or repuching… Eight veterinarians are tried for “complicity in deception and forgery in an administrative act”. Most have admitted providing their customers with blank medication slips, or certifying the health of animals for export without even seeing them.

According to the investigators, the Sanofi-Pasteur animals had large lymph nodes and cysts in the neck, due to repeated injections. Stigmas that the slaughterhouse specialists could not avoid seeing. But it is Spanish traders who would have allowed the slaughter in Spain of these horses which could not be slaughtered in France.

This trial comes a few months after a precedent which had seen the appearance of 18 French, Belgian and Dutch defendants, for “fraud and deception” based on a massive documentary fraud of equine passports, again to bring prohibited meat into the supply chain. human food. A third case is to be tried in September, still in Marseille.

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