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Prosecutors crack 'systematic egg fraud'
Published: 25 Feb 13 08:07 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130225-48173.html
Prosecutors are investigating around 200 German egg farmers suspected of falsely labelling their produce as organic or free-range, in what has been described as fraud on a massive scale.
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Prosecutors in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, told Der Spiegel magazine they were investigating around 150 firms in that state and around 50 elsewhere. Frauke Wilken, spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told the magazine that initial investigations had begun in the autumn of 2011, and had revealed ever more suspect operations.
"The suspicion is that this is a case of systematic fraud. It is no minor matter - it would be deception of consumers," said Christian Mayer, the new Lower Saxony agriculture minister.
He said if the suspicions were proven, he would move to withdraw operation licenses from the relevant farms.
Those under suspicion were largely conventional farms, but some organic farms were also affected.
Chickens and their eggs can only be described as free-range if each animal has access to at least four square metres of space, while the description organic, or "bio" in German, requires further specific conditions.
Should any farmers be convicted of breaking the food produce and animal feed laws or organic farming laws, they could be fined or even imprisoned for up to a year. Charges of fraud could also be pressed.
DPA/The Local/hc
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Your comments about this article:
Seriously though, this kind of fraud was only a matter of time to be revealed. The last 5 years, the market is flooded with "BIO" products. Even at the discount supermarkets you find more BIO eggs, milk and meat than the "normal" ones, while the price is only slightly higher. Those two observations are more than sufficient to make anyone suspicious about the real origin of those "organic" products.
Your daily comments triple my enjoyment of reading the local. I think the editors should give you your own column, where you could give a sarcastic, yet humourous, breakdown on the days news. Keep up the good work as not only do you hit the hammer square on the head, you bring many people a good laugh in these often too depressing times.
TL prefer to remove my comments so I doubt they would offer me my own column. In any case if they did it would likely be on an internship basis. But thanks for the good feedback in any case. Life is too short to be taken too serious but is also too short to keep one's head buried in the sand.
If you make the same comment against enough articles, eventually someone will laugh.
c.f. The horse meat from Poland article.
Yawn...
It applied to both articles so I made it on both articles. TL articles tend to repeat themselves a lot anyway. Yawn!
I didn't want to do the time for the crime, so I eat chemo eggs and chickens.
With all of the genetically modified corn and soybeans, if they feed them a kernel of either they aren't organic chickens, but they possible could be free range.
I hope you guys get the government to test the chickens that are free range for genetically modified grain in them.
Of course fraud and corruption are to be found in any country, including Germany. Still Greece remains the champion, where apparently half of the population practices tax evasion, as a recent survey shows (http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_24/02/2013_484413). "The findings point to the fact that many Greeks still do not see tax dodging as a bad thing"