KIEV: Ukraine has been buying meat from companies abroad that have been guilty of selling unsafe meat to Eastern Europe. That includes meat from a plant in Bad Bentheim, Germany, where ARD German television found formers workers who say were ordered to mix spoiled ground meat, essentially waste product from other plants, with fresh meat. Meat from this company was sold into Eastern Europe including Ukraine by the plant’s owner, Trinity Gmbh, a company in Lower Saxony which boasts on its website that it is the “masters in meat processing.”
When workers complained about what was going on, they say they were fired and then threatened.
“One ton of bad meat is mixed with three tons of normal meat,” the workers told the ARD reporters. “They say they were forced to mix spoiled ground chicken with fresh ground chicken.”
The story offers a glimpse into practices in the meat-import business, which in 2013 totaled US$ 629 million in Ukraine. And that’s just the number for the “legitimate” meat importers business—it doesn’t include smuggled meat. An investigation by reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) indicates that meat is being trafficked into Ukraine, just like illegal weapons and drugs.
