Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Horse burger pair get 8yrs
Contaminated meat scandal men are jailed
TWO businessmen who mixed horse meat into beef used for supermarket burgers, pies and ready meals have been jailed.
Andronicos Sideras, 55, who mixed 30 tonnes of horse meat, including pet ponies, with beef at a cold store in North London, was given four years and six months.
Ulrik Nielsen, 58, who sold the “horse-beef” on to supermarkets and food processing firms, got three years and six months.
During the horse meat scandal that spread across
Europe in 2013 several supermarket products, including Tesco ownbrand burgers, were with- drawn amid widespread disgust. Sentencing the men at Inner London crown court, Judge Owen Davies QC said the scandal had “an impact upon the public”, who were “suspicious of the food they had”. He said: “It extends far beyond the meat. The confidence in the food chain was affected adversely.”
Sideras, of Southgate, North London, had earlier been found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, while Nielsen, of Gentofte, Denmark, had admitted the charge.
Flexifoods boss Nielsen’s “righthand man” Alex Beech, 44, who handled the accounting, admitted conspiracy to defraud and got an 18-month suspended sentence.
The multi-million-pound scam was foiled when a surprise inspection at a cold store revealed horse DNA and identification chips in meat labelled “100 per cent beef ”.
Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay said: “This was but part of the wider horse meat scandal.”