Ingmar Nevéus: Trust in the Polish meat drops like a stone

Reporter from the investigative tv program Superwizjer leaves no one indifferent. When you see the smygtagna the pictures of the greenish rotten meat, of cows with svartnande tumors and bleeding bed sores, it is ready to immediately become a vegetarian.

And yet, says the wallraffande reporter Patryk Szczepaniak for DN, the channel TVN24 cut off the most offensive elements.

Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski first chose to attack the journalists who had made the programme. He questioned their ”justification”. The thing is that the government takes privately owned TV as an enemy, while the state TVP has been transformed into a clean propagandaorgan.

When it was impossible to deny the scandal changed the government foot. Now it is called instead if it is an isolated case.

and his colleagues have been able to show that köttfusket is widespread and systematic. Online found it one day in december, almost 700 ads where people offered to buy sick cows. And then the program sent journalists received dozens of tips about similar, or worse, abuses all over the country.

the Government's desperation is easy to understand. Meat is big business in Poland and 80 per cent of beef is exported. In 2017, exports amounted to 415 million kg, to a value of 1.5 billion dollars.

of course, that the confidence of the Polish meat drops like a stone. Getting it back can take several years.

But the government's the tags are outward-attitude threatens to hurt worse. When one denies or reduces problems easily creates the impression that there are even bigger scandals to hide.

the Matter is also compounded by the government's often hostile attitude to Brussels. In this case it was the Polish authorities in the two weeks after the report to the police to report the fraud to the EU.

Then, it was already clear that the potentially dangerous meat had been exported to at least twelve other EU-countries, among them Sweden.

the EU experts have now inspected the Polish slaughterhouses and leaving in brief his report. But perhaps, the damage would become less if they come earlier – both for the Polish and Swedish consumers.