A SUBSTANTIAL quantity of cash as well as a bag of microchips and a sack of equine passports are believed to have been confiscated as part of the ongoing Gardai investigation into a suspected fraudulent equine identifcation scam in the horsemeat trade.

It’s understood that a six-figure sum of cash was confiscated in Co Westmeath while in Roscommon, a bag of microchips and a sack containing assorted equine passports were seized as part of planned searches by members of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) across seven locations in the midlands and west.

A Garda Press Office spokesperson confirmed to The Irish Field on Thursday evening that “the investigation is ongoing”.

To date, no arrests have been made in the investigation which centres on the tampering of identifcation passports and microchips for horses presented for slaughter.

The NBCI were backed up by officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau, the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, Gardai National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau with assistance of officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine as well as from the Food Safety Authority in the searches across Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Westmeath and Kilkenny last Thursday.

It’s also believed that an illegal trade in old or unwanted equine passports has seen such documents changing hands for in the region of €100 per book including at marts and fairs nationwide.

European alerts

Up to May 31st 2019, some 2,585 equines have been slaughtered in Ireland for human consumption and exported to Europe. Last year, horse slaughter figures for human consumption in Ireland stood at 6,573 for the 12 months.

In the last two months, there has been two European food safety alerts about Irish horsemeat.

On June 4th, an alert from the Irish authorities about a risk of dioxins in chilled horse meat from Ireland caused a recall in France.

On May 2nd, tins of Lackmann Tuschonka Konskaya horse meat were recalled “as a precautionary measure” due to uncertainty as to the traceability of the meat. The recall followed an EU alert triggered by the UK authorities on March 4th last.

It cited poor traceability records for horses from the UK and Ireland that were slaughtered in Germany. The meat had been distributed to Belgium, China, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the UK.