Berlin - Around 150 tons of rotten meat have been shipped from the southern German state of Bavaria to Berlin companies making Turkish-style doner kebab skewers and then distributed across Germany, prosecutors said Friday. Federal Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Horst Seehofer said in the Bavarian capital of Munich that the EU authorities had been informed, as there appeared to be a European dimension to the fraud.
The quantity of meat involved has risen steadily since the scandal first came to light.
The deliveries date from June 2006, according to prosecutors in Memmingen, west of Munich.
The meat, which was deemed "unfit" for human consumption, came from a Bavarian company and ended up at fast-food stands across eight states after being processed in Berlin.
Earlier reports spoke of 20 tons delivered to Berlin in July and sold to a distributor on August 17.
Seehofer called for stiff punishments for all concerned. The scandal in Bavaria, Seehofer's political base, demonstrated the "criminal energy" being deployed to circumvent consumer protection laws, he said.
There have been calls for meat labelled "unfit" to be sprayed with dye in future to prevent it being relabelled and sold on. German politicians are demanding action at European Union level.
There have been repeated meat scandals in Germany over the years.
In February, tons of spoilt meat was found in a refrigerating plant in the southwestern town of Illertissen. It had come from Italy and was destined for France and Russia.
Last year, a company in the city of Passau, near Bavaria's border with Austria, was reported to have sold 140 tons of spoilt meat under false labels. In some cases, sell-by dates had been exceeded by four years.
There was another major meat scandal in 2005.
