Hormone mafia in firing line

Date: 28/03/1996

By Jean-Paul Marthoz

EARLIER this month, Belgium was among the 14 EU member states which endorsed and strengthened the existing ban on the use of beef hormones at the risk of widening the row with the US over the export of hormone-treated meat to the Union.

The Belgian agriculture minister's support for the move came as no great surprise, however, as the country of the 'bleu-blanc-belge' and 'Ardennes ham' lies at the heart of a huge and scary international traffic in hormones organised by one of the most brutal global crime syndicates from which it firmly wants to break free.

A few weeks before EU farm ministers voted in support of maintaining and reinforcing the ban on the use of hormones in livestock production, with stiffer penalties for offenders, Flanders - a major meat producer and therefore one of the privileged targets of the hormone connection - declared itself a 'beef-free' zone for one day in memory of the cold-blooded assassination of health inspector Dr Karel Van Noppen by contract killers last year.

The idea behind this symbolic gesture was to put increased pressure on the Belgian authorities to speed up legal proceedings and intensify their investigations into the 'hormonenmafia' amid mounting concern about the scale of the trade.

The call appears to have been heard. On 17 March, the Belgian police announced that they had detained a veterinary inspector from Tielt and charged him with corruption and a violation of professional secrecy.

The hormone 'black file' has been a source of mounting anxiety for Belgian consumers, health inspectors, butchers and the country's police authorities for years.

A powerful mafia with international connections has violently imposed its rule on part of the meat business, ruthlessly bullying anyone who dares to stand in its way.

In the hormone black-market economy, violence is indeed the name of the game. Last year, a few days before his murder, Van Noppen was explicitly threatened by people linked to the hormone underworld.

One of the leading adversaries of the meat mafia and author of a ground-breaking investigation into their dirty deals, Belgian MEP Jaak Vandemeulebroucke, has been a regular target of intimidation and even assassination attempts.

Tales of undue pressure and threats are rife, painting a picture of the breeding industry as a sector which operates in a cut-throat atmosphere more reminiscent of US-style racketeering than of rural beatitude.

Retribution, say critics, has been rather slow in coming for suspect stock-breeders, lorry drivers, laboratory technicians and veterinarians. The meat business is big business, the hormone business is a lot juicier still.

Despite the imposition of heavy penalties on offenders and a cascade of inspections and investigations, the trafficking in hormone-treated meat has continued. Huge sums are involved and many people along the lawless roads of the hormone trail can make easy money by flouting the rules.

In recent years, many Flemish journalists have been tracking the hormone mafia, compiling evidence of sophisticated cross-border arrangements.

Only last year, in a well-informed report entitled “The Antwerp province and Switzerland, where the hormone mafia is at home”, the Dutch-speaking daily newspaper De Morgen told the story of an unidentified lorry driver who made a trip to Switzerland and back every week and was paid 700,000 Belgian francs for each delivery.

Now, finally, the traffickers are feeling the heat. But most observers believe that the real effectiveness of the anti-hormone campaign will come from the drying up of the market through a combination of growing consumer awareness of traffickers' activities and legal sanctions.

Will Belgians go the way of beef-buster guru Jeremy Rifkin and avoid all meat products? Two decades ago, a consumer boycott of hormone-treated veal was a success and is still remembered by many.

Could the same thing happen again on a wider scale?

For honest breeders and butchers, the scandal is naturally regarded as nothing short of a catastrophe, since the battle against trade in hormones has consistently been replayed through campaigns organised by powerful consumers' associations.

Influenced by reports on the activities of the hormone mafia appearing in the pages of their daily newspapers, many people have begun to suspect that all meat contains illegal hormones, fuelling understandable fears among honest breeders and butchers of a drop in the sale of meat in general.

Consequently, in most Belgian butcher shops, notices proclaiming that all meat products are hormone-free are prominently displayed. For these 'quality butchers' are in the front-line of the hormone war, as are the consumers who vote with their wallets.