Italy police seizes facility re-labelling Polish meat as Italian

Italian police have raided an illegal laboratory in Villaricca, near Naples, that was allegedly boning cured Polish meat and re-labelling it as Italian.

The facility has different machines that were being used to repackage ham originally boned in Poland, and pasting false labels of Italian companies, including the popular Parma ham producers, whose products are protected by the European Union as being a traditional regional specialty.

Two Polish citizens have been arrested on charges of committing commercial food fraud. The police has also confiscated all equipments at the facility, including refrigerators, knives, clasps, desks and presses.

Authorities are currently investigating as to where these products were being sold.

According to estimates, Italy loses billions of euros every year due to various incidents of food fraud with wine, cheese and meat, among the most affected products.

In another incident in September last year, police confiscated around half a million bottles of counterfeit red wine that were being repackaged as products of Tuscany’s Brunello di Montalcino. An estimated 160,000 litres of fake wine that would have earned the producers around €5m ($5.59m) was seized in the scandal.

The county’s food fraud squad NAS is also said to have seized fraudulent meat worth €143.7m last year.

Thelocal.it reported that the country raises around eight million pigs annually, out of which 70% are used to produce meat products that come with EU quality. The production of such meat contributes around €20bn to the country’s economy annually.

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Image: Italian police seized fraudulent meat worth €143.7m in 2014. Photo: courtesy of federico stevanin/ freedigitalphotos.net.