Beware: rotten meat ! | France 2 | Envoyé Spécial

Although France is one of the countries with the strictest food health safety controls in the world (643 hospitalizations and 6 deaths in 2005), scandals over rotten meat make regular headlines. One affair in particular was splashed all across the media at the end of November: the record seizure of 12 tonnes of meat in a small company’s warehouse in the Val d’Oise. The company was selling defrosted, past sell-by date meat on the markets in the Ile de France. Our investigation led us to Rungis where we discovered the existence of a very peculiar practice: the ?sharks? who buy up unsold meat from the wholesalers at rock bottom prices. It’s a legal practice, but one that can lead to dangerous shortcomings as that affair showed. But our attention was mainly focused on the poor practices of the major retailers who market 70% of the meat sold in France. Despite the many checks by the health authorities, frauds continue, such as the ?rewrap?, which we managed to film with a hidden camera in the lab of a major national supermarket chain. It’s an illegal practice consisting of restocking shelves with meat that has passed its sell-by date. And top-class establishments are not necessarily synonymous with quality. We analyzed chicken slices from a high-class sandwich bar in the Paris region. The result was alarming: the meat was not fit for human consumption!