Despite marks on the neck, Sanofi horses ended up on our plates

From the racetrack to the plate, passing through several years in a farm-laboratory of Sanofi Pasteur. The Marseille criminal court was interested on Tuesday, on the second day of a new trial on horse meat trafficking, in the destiny of 185 so-called “reformed” horses from Sanofi. And many of whom ended up in the food chain, although bearing identifiable marks when they entered the slaughterhouse: visible traces of injections at the level of the neck on the left side, and marks on the rump, with iron until summer 2012, then with nitrogen. An “S” in the name of Sanofi.

“I have a very nice client to whom I owe a lot, he allowed me to earn money”, confides at the helm Fabrice Daniel, about Sanofi who bought him horses for the manufacture of anti-serums. equine venoms, before reselling them to him a few years later after good and loyal service. The Sanofi farm, located in Alba-la-Romaine, in Ardèche, is a long-time customer of the family. Like his father before him, Fabrice Daniel, a horse dealer based in the Gard, supplies Sanofi with French trotters from Normandy. In batches of 20 to 25 horses, three times a year.

“The galley of undocumented horses”

In 2004, the rules of the game changed for the resale of retired horses. “Before, I bought more expensive and I had them slaughtered, says Fabrice Daniel. Afterwards, as a precautionary principle, they decided that they were banned from slaughter. “From then on, Sanofi sells them for a pittance, 10 euros, and mentions “prohibited slaughter” on the animal’s notebook and the invoice drawn up in the name of Fabrice Daniel’s company. Of the 185 horses sold by Sanofi in 2011 and 2012, investigators only found traces of 113 horses. Among them, at least 29 horses ended up in the Narbonne slaughterhouse, through Patrick Rochette, meat wholesaler and considered the main actor in the fraud judged these days in Marseille.

“You know that his main activity is butchery? “Asks the president of the court Céline Ballerini. “He never told me it was for slaughter, I never would have thought, defends the horse dealer somehow, who is also accused of illegal castrations. “I would have informed at least Sanofi. If I had had any doubts, I would have reacted,” he adds during a laborious hearing. The case is in any case juicy for him, with Sanofi horses bought 10 euros and resold… at the price of the weight in kilograms of meat, between 250 and 300 euros.

For his part, Patrick Rochette recognizes the facts. Of the forty Sanofi horses purchased from Fabrice Daniel, 29 were therefore slaughtered in Narbonne, on the basis of a fake inserted in the identification book: “I changed the sheet on which was written slaughter prohibited, and we put in a blank one,” he admits. According to him, the other horses were exported to Spain, for the saddle. Earlier in the morning, Patrick Rochette explained at length at the bar on the mechanisms of horse fraud unfit for consumption. “We played with the papers, it’s true we made mistakes,” he admitted. And also: “All my life, it has been a hassle with these horses without papers. »

“Pretty horses, very well cared for, fat, sellers”

“It is difficult to understand why you do not ask yourself questions about the health risk, asks Céline Ballerini about Sanofi horses. This file has a public health connotation, why didn’t you have this barrier? The president of the court reminds him of the recent health scandals, the negative consequences on the image of the horse industry. And the questions that arise on “the long-term effects” of the consumption of meat from Sanofi horses, “even if the legal expertise shows that a priori, in the short and medium term, there is no danger for human consumption.

For Patrick Rochette, Sanofi trotters are above all “pretty horses, very well cared for, fat, sellers”. “In my mind, these horses before we killed them, they were extraordinary meat horses,” he said. I never thought of poisoning someone. “To this vision, all commercial, the president of the court opposes the photos showing the damaged neck of the Sanofi horses. So much so that butchers were surprised to receive incomplete carcasses.

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