Could the food scandal in Gernsheim in southern Hesse have been prevented if the apparently overburdened veterinary office in the Groß-Gerau district had turned to the food safety task force of the state of Hesse?

This question must now be clarified.

Because although the fruit and vegetable farm Maus had not been checked since 2019, according to information from the veterinary office, the Hessian Ministry of Consumer Protection and the Darmstadt regional council did not ask the task force to support the district with food controls.

The state of Hesse had already set up the food safety task force as a special unit at the Darmstadt regional council in 2006.

The twelve investigators are responsible for the whole of Hesse and are intended to contribute to "strengthening consumer protection" and "improving cross-authority cooperation".

This apparently did not happen in the case of the fruit farm Maus, which led to several people becoming infected with listeria due to unsanitary conditions and four of them becoming ill.

The public prosecutor's office in Darmstadt is investigating against the owner of the company.

Companies should be asked to pay

According to a spokesman for the regional council, seven of the task force members work in the health and veterinary sector, while the rest take care of administration and technology.

The interdisciplinary team consists of three food chemists, three veterinarians, a food inspector, a lawyer, two administrators, a technical expert and an information technology specialist.

The task force tries to increase food safety with the help of changing priority programs, the organization of further education events and the training of employees in the municipal health authorities.

According to its own information, the ministry last asked the districts during a service meeting on March 29 to use the joint control options with the task force.

For the case in Gernsheim, it was of course too late, because the catastrophic lack of hygiene had already been noticed there and between October 2021 and January 2022 people in Frankfurt hospitals were infected due to cucumber slices contaminated with germs.

On March 21, the Darmstadt public prosecutor's office received a complaint from the district administration of Groß-Gerau on suspicion of a crime under the Food and Feed Code.

The Ministry of Consumer Protection now wants the task force to be expanded and special companies that produce raw food, for example, to be more closely monitored by the regional councils in the future.

According to a spokeswoman, there are plans to change the fee schedule.

If a company applies for EU approval, the necessary control should be charged to the company.

"The circles get a new source of income," said the spokeswoman.

The annual costs for the veterinary administration in Hesse amount to around 46.6 million euros.

How much of this is spent on food monitoring cannot be individually quantified.

The AfD faction in the state parliament draws comparisons to the Wilke-Wurst scandal and sees a lack of controls and a lack of staff as the cause of the scandal.

"The only solution to prevent similar cases in the future is to better equip the control authorities and carry out the controls at shorter intervals," said Gerhard Schenk, spokesman for consumer protection for the AfD parliamentary group.

Next week, Wednesday, April 27, the Committee for the Environment, Climate Protection and Consumer Protection will meet in the state parliament.

The FDP parliamentary group then wants to know from Environment Minister Priska Hinz (The Greens) exactly when the state government knew about the hygiene deficiencies.

The report request comprises a total of 26 questions.