The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality says that 30,000 kilos of meat from slaughterhouses in the northern provinces that had reached the market has been traced destroyed.
Translation by Traci White
Dagblad van het Noorden reports that the reason the meat was destroyed was because an ongoing investigation into the integrity of several employees of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in the north.
The investigation was prompted by reports of possible inconsistencies during meat quality inspections: some of the animals that were slaughtered may have been injured or sick. Over the weekend, the Leeuwarder Courant wrote that there have been several confirmed cases of animals who were not well enough to be transported or slaughtered for meat were still processed.
In 2017, one northern slaughterhouse and two cattle dealers were charged with transporting sick or wounded cattle, as were four cattle dealers in May of 2018 and a slaughterhouse owner in July of last year. The agricultural ministry is carrying out its investigation into the meat processing facilities in the north and the conduct of the NVWA.
In the Dutch parliament, D66 MP Tjeerd de Groot has been vocal about his concerns surrounding the meat processing industry in a wider sense. Earlier this month, De Groot told The Guardian, “We think these court cases are only the tip of the iceberg. We hear stories from representatives of whistleblowers that carcasses of rejected animals are hung aside, seemingly for destruction, but that actual destruction doesn’t take place. We want to know if we are talking about mere incidents or about something structural.”