The Canadian Food Inspection Agency yanked the licence of a
horse-slaughtering plant in Saskatchewan in December, 2008, long before it was
implicated in a European scandal.
A newspaper in France is reporting that Jan Fasen, 64, a
Dutch trader, bought Canadian horsemeat that he sold to a company that marketed
it as halal beef.
Fasen is under arrest now as officials investigate his Draap
Trading brokerage which is at the centre of the European horsemeat scandal.
Fasen is alleged to have purchased 26 tonnes of frozen
horsemeat in October, 2007, and it became part of a sale to a company in
Normanby, France, that sold it as ground halal beef.
That Fasen deal was done via Fasen Meat Trading.
The horsemeat was from the Natural Valley Farms Inc. plant
at Wolseley, Sask. The CFIA suspended its licence in December, 2008.
Fasen Meat Trading was dissolved that same month and Fasen
then set up Draap Trading in Cyprus.
