Euro police seize fake food, drinks in new drive
Print Edition
FORGET fake news. European police have joined forces to seize almost 10,000 tons of fake and harmful food and drink, from caviar to cashew nuts, booze to bubbly water and even unassuming stock cubes.
Some 230 million euros (US$250 million) worth of “potentially harmful” counterfeit food products and over 26 millions liters of beverages were impounded in a four-month joint Europol and Interpol operation involving 61 countries, the two agencies said yesterday.
In total 13 million items were seized, and 13 people arrested during 50,000 checks carried out at shops, markets, airports, seaports and industrial estates from December 1 to March 31 in the sixth such annual operation, a joint statement said.
During the operation dubbed OPSON VI, German police cracked down on undeclared peanuts, cashews and almonds mixed into imported hazelnut spreads and not labelled, which could have posed dangers for people with allergies.
“This operation has once again shown that criminals will fake any type of food and drink with no thought to the human cost as long as they make a profit,” said Interpol coordinator Francoise Dorcier.
In France, police seized 179,000 counterfeit seasoning stock cubes posing as a famous brand, the two agencies said. It was not clear if they were the Maggi brand, so beloved in French households.
And in Tuscany, Italian police swooped on an organized group producing counterfeit red wine in a Tuscan farmhouse. In a new trend they also flushed out 31,000 bottles of mineral water, imitating a registered brand, in a separate operation.
Investigations took a fishy turn in Portugal, where in a warehouse in Porto thousands of cans almost expired sardines in tomato sauce were found. Some 311,000 cans were seized along with 9,900 packing boxes, and the business shut down.
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