by date found at 50 Germany companies Berlin, Nov 25, SPA -- Meat that was dishonestly labelled fresh though it was past its sell-by date has been discovered at 50 German companies in a nationwide crackdown by health inspectors, a farm ministry official told Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa) on Friday in Berlin. Not all the companies were dishonest: Some were victims of fraud, said Gert Lindemann, state secretary at the ministry. Nor was there evidence of any criminal network as the cases did not appear to be connected. Inspectors said some of the meat they found smelled bad or had mould on it, but Lindemann said nobody had become sick from eating the meat yet, and health inspectors believed the risk was low. Germans have been alarmed this month by a string of disclosures about wholesalers relabelling meat instead of discarding it after sell-by dates expired. Officials are to meet next week in Bonn to consider whether current laws are too lax. In one of the worst cases, police arrested a 64-year-old businessman in a suburb of Bonn on Friday after inspectors found 200 kilograms of sausage with false sell-by dates on the packaging. He was later bailed but is to be charged with breaches of food- safety and labelling laws. Police took away 1 ton of his meat. The German Butchers' Federation charged Friday that the problem was caused by mass production for supermarkets. It said small butcher's shops knew the exact slaughter date and source of every piece of meat on sale. --SP 2045 Local Time 1745 GMT
