The Guardia Civil has placed two men aged 47 and 57 under investigation for their alleged involvement in the sale at street markets (mercadillos) in the provinces of Alicante and Valencia of fruit that had been rejected for human consumption and intended exclusively to feed animals.
The inquiries began following prior actions by the Servicio de Protección de la Naturaleza (Seprona) of the Comandancia of Alicante, in which the commercialization of banana as "Plátano de Canarias" had already been detected.
As a consequence of those events, the agents activated a specific device to identify the operators that could be improperly backing fruit under that protected brand, as the armed institute has detailed in a press release.
During the inspections, the investigators found that a wholesale operator allegedly supplied banana and other fruit to the holders of livestock farms which, due to its condition or characteristics, had been excluded from the human food chain, with the aim of ensuring it was intended only for the animals’ diet.
By analyzing the documentation of those deliveries, the agents detected an ovine and caprine farm that withdrew very high volumes of fruit despite having a very small number of livestock heads and, for long periods, without having any animals.
The proceedings carried out made it possible to reconstruct the product’s route. Once the fruit was collected and transferred to the farm located in the Torrellano district, in the municipal district of Elche, a second person allegedly came in a van, loaded several boxes of bananas, and distributed them in street markets in different municipalities of the provinces of Alicante and Valencia.
Sale as a quality product and without hygienic guarantees
According to the Guardia Civil, the fruit was offered to the public as "Plátano de Canarias", using the same silkscreened packaging with the brand and with numerous pieces that still retained their original labels. In addition, it was transported in a vehicle used in the agricultural and livestock activity itself, without carrying out prior cleaning or disinfection work, and it was stored at the farm alongside the animals and their excrement, where it was allegedly handled and repackaged into boxes that had been previously rejected.
Having been removed from the human consumption chain and handled subsequently without any kind of hygienic-sanitary guarantee, the fruit was running "risk of contamination", according to the conclusions of the Benemérita.
The investigation also made it possible to determine the extent of the diversion: in the year prior to the inspection, the holder of the operation would have received more than 133 tons of fruit, of which 69 tons corresponded to "Plátano de Canarias". It also removed tomatoes discarded for human consumption from an agricultural holding. In the record made, 167 kilograms of protected-brand bananas were seized.
Finally, the two investigated parties have been made available to the Instruction Section of the Court of Instance of Elche, to which the proceedings carried out have been referred, as alleged authors of an offence against public health, another related to the market and consumers, and a third against industrial property.
The Guardia Civil emphasizes that foods that are withdrawn from human consumption and destined for animal feed cannot be reintroduced into the human food chain and recalls that the fraudulent use of a protected geographical indication harms both the consumer, who pays a price for a quality they do not receive, and the producers who do comply with the requirements of the mark.