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In Marseille, 18 people appear for “organized gang scam”. They are suspected of having bought old animals, making the owners believe that the horses could benefit from a retirement in a meadow. They were actually slaughtered and sold.
Horses that are too old, sick or under medication, and meat unfit for consumption that ends up in the food chain after an organized fraud: the investigation began in 2013. Tuesday, June 7, in Marseille (Bouches- du-Rhône), the owners of horses who were victims of the scam are awaiting convictions. Aline Oudin, civil party, thought of temporarily entrusting her animal to a professional, for a quiet pension. “They told me, you know, my little lady, at this hour, your horse is already in a tray in the shelves”, she says. She considered her animal as “a member of the family”.
A 58-year-old Belgian trader, Jean-Marc Decker, is suspected of being the kingpin of the traffic. He is accused of having imported thousands of horses from several European countries, then having had their certificates falsified to make them fit for human consumption, before sending them back to slaughterhouses in the south of France. In the box of the accused are the Belgian merchant as well as 17 people, including French veterinarians, who plead naivety and overly vague health rules. Prosecuted for “organized fraud” and “deception”, their trial should last two weeks.