October 5, 2009

Consumers in Poland have digested tonnes of rotten meat from old Swedish stocks, as reported by the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

The meat served in restaurants, schools, retirement homes, prisons and kindergartens appeared to be very old in many cases.

The meat reportedly came from inventories, which were created during the Cold War; some are aged up to 27 years.

More than 1.5 million kilograms of meat were packaged for the Swedish Army from 1982 to 1993 in tin cans that have come through dubious channels to Poland. And not only that: the old meat which was initially sold as animal feed in 1999 by Swedish authorities to a trader was also offered for sale on the Internet.

Already two years ago, 100 000 cans of meat were transferred to a "firm" in Krakow, which from research by journalists appeared to be a private residence.

From there, the bad meat arrived at twelve food producers in southern and central Poland.

Officials of the Polish Public Health Department provided a certificate stating that "the physical-chemical and microbiological analysis showed no heavy metals and bacteria that cause disease and make the product unfit for consumption."

The journalists of the private TV-station TVN, however, contradicted this certificate as they obtained cans of meat and had these analysed at the Ministry of Agriculture in Warsaw.

The cans showed that meat was rancid and smelled bad, and therefore no longer to be used even as animal feed. Consumption could even lead to poisoning.

Swedish food inspectors said that the information was new to them. Spokesman Peter Bradenmark said the "sellers are responsible for the quality and not enough to simply say that it tastes good", hence, the "meat must be tested in laboratories."