First jailing in horsemeat scandal: but not in UK
The 45-year old was sentenced in Den Bosch, The Netherlands, after his conviction for selling 300t of horsemeat labelled as beef. Charges referred to Selton’s forging of invoices and labels and making false declarations.
According to the court judgement: “By selling largely to foreign buyers, he [Selton] contributed to a negative image of the Dutch beef industry, causing damage to the sector” for his own profit.
‘Selling largely to foreign buyers’
Dutch officials took 167 samples from his meat supplies in February 2013 and 35 tested positive for horse DNA, the court was told.
Selton blamed his conviction on bad booking. Reportedly declared bankrupt, he was said to face damages claims totalling £8M.
Professor Chris Elliott noted the jailing in a post on the social networking site Twitter. (Read the tweet at the end of this article). Elliott, professor of food safety at the Institute for Global Food Security, Queens University, Belfast, was commissioned by the government two years ago to investigate what lessons could be learned from the horsemeat crisis.
What lessons could be learned
His recommendations led to the setting up of the new Food Crime Unit, part of the Food Standards Agency. Head of the unit Andy Morling began work at the end of March.
Horsemeat justice
- The Netherlands: Willy Selton, two and a half years jail term
- UK: Peter Boddy, £8k fine
- UK: David Moss, four months suspended prison sentence
Meanwhile, last month slaughterhouse boss Peter Boddy became the first person in the UK to be convicted in relation to the horsemeat scandal. Boddy, who runs a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire, was fined £8,000 at Southwark Crown Court for failing to comply with EU meat traceability regulations.
The conviction concerned his sale of 55 carcasses without keeping records of who bought them and allowing 17 animals to enter his business without documentation.
The horsemeat crisis of 2013 lead to the recall of thousands of tonnes of meat and meat products and millions of pounds worth of damage to the European food industry, alongside untold reputational damage. Beef products contaminated with horsemeat were discovered across Europe, after suppliers in France and The Netherlands were revealed to have mislabelled horsemeat.
It began in in January 2013 when frozen burgers supplied to several supermarkets, including Tesco, were found to contain horse DNA.
