One in Three Businesses Cheats on Game Meat Declaration
Food inspectors from the Office for Food Safety and Animal Health conducted spot checks in Graubünden and the canton of Glarus to verify whether accurate information is provided about the origin of game meat.
Game season with false origin
September marks not only the beginning of autumn, but also of the recreational hunting and game season.
Yet not all game meat on offer in southeastern Switzerland originates from local recreational hunters or local breeding.
38 percent of businesses found to have deficiencies
Of 34 food businesses inspected in the cantons of Graubünden and Glarus, deficiencies were identified in 13 (38%).
In seven cases, a Swiss or regional origin was falsely indicated, even though the game meat came from abroad. In five cases, only “EU” was stated instead of the country of origin where the animal was killed. One business was unable to prove the origin of the meat it had claimed due to missing documentation.
Stricter controls announced
The inspection took place in September and October and focused on restaurants that advertised game dishes during the recreational hunting season . The claimed origin of the meat was verified on the basis of information on delivery notes and labelled goods.
Due to the “unsatisfactory” result, the declaration of meat origin during the recreational hunting season will now be subject to increased scrutiny, the authorities announced.
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More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
