Two poultry slaughterhouses in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are suspected of having sold fake organic chickens for years. The Landshut public prosecutor’s office therefore secured documents during a large raid in the two federal states as well as in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
The spokesman for the Landshut public prosecutor’s office, Alexander Ecker, said on Thursday that six people, four men and two women, were being investigated on suspicion of commercial fraud and violations of food law. These are the people in charge of the company. The two companies are said to have business relationships with each other. One is located in the Lower Bavarian district of Rottal-Inn. The investigators have not yet given any specific information on the location of the second company.
The public prosecutor’s office received an anonymous complaint in the middle of this year and then began investigations. There is a suspicion that since the beginning of 2018 the accused have re-declared conventional chicken meat and chicken in particular as “tested quality Bavarian, organic and Naturland goods” in order to achieve higher prices with the quality seals. “Furthermore, there is a suspicion that thawed chickens should have been wrongly labeled as fresh goods,” explained chief public prosecutor Ecker.
In addition to the two slaughterhouses, the rooms of business partners were also searched on Wednesday, with a total of 150 emergency services deployed in 24 locations. In particular, accounting documents and delivery notes were confiscated. The evaluation will now take some time, said Ecker. An investigation group was formed at the police station in Passau.