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Sara Petrosyan

Slap on the Wrist: Court Fines Supplier of Inedible Chicken Meat to Yerevan Kindergartens $1,000

Unfit for consumption poultry also winds up in Yerevan grocery stores

While describing his business career while seated in the inspector’s office, the young man who supplied unfit for consumption chicken to kindergartens in Yerevan’s Nor Nork district, proudly declared that he started the business a mere two years ago and was able to win numerous tender bids.

One month ago, he received an email offer to participate in a bid declared by the Yerevan Municipality to supply chicken. He entered and won the bid just four months after getting involved in the poultry business.

Based on a contract signed with the Yerevan Municipality on July 10, 2014, Edward Mkhitaryan was obligated to provide fresh poultry to 18 kindergartens in the Nor Nork district. He attracted the attention of law enforcement on August 11, 2014, while supplying poultry of a suspicious nature to kindergartens #101, 116 and 118.

The preliminary investigative body, the Yerevan Investigative Department of Armenia’s Investigative Committee, while drafting tits conclusions, decreased the extent of the charges, giving the impressions that he started the business on August 10.

The Avan and Nor Nork Administrative Court, Judge Armen Vardapetyan presiding, fined Edward Mkhitaryan 500,000 AMD (US$1,050) for supplying the three Yerevan kindergartens with impermissible poultry four months previously.

 The Investigative Committee left out the most important section of the successful businessman’s operation from the indictment. Namely, that Edward Mkhitaryan told the inspector that the poultry farm had been founded on March 9, 2014 and that the business had started in January of the same year via Y.E.R. Und Ko Ltd., an outfit founded under the name of his friend Yervand. Then, he leased a poultry farm operating in the Lori Province village of Tchotchkan. He then obtained 30,940one day old chicks from the Araks Poultry Plant and hired eight local village residents to raise them. The chicks were kept for 55-60 days. Some 500 birds died because he couldn’t buy feed.

Afterwards, he hired two animal slaughterers who proceeded to slaughter 8,000 chickens (the poultry farm had no slaughter house). Another 14,000 were slaughtered in the Araks factory. He compensated them with one ton of chickens. Prior to this, he leased warehouses at the Zvartnots Airport and in the village of Parakar. He then transported the slaughtered chickens from the Tchotchkan poultry farm, through the streets of Yerevan, to the above mentioned warehouses via a Ford Transit van that lacked refrigeration and with a Niva automobile belonging to a friend. The same Ford Transit van had been used to carry poultry feed from the Araks Poultry Factory to Tchotchkan.

Afterwards, using the same vehicles, he transported the slaughtered chickens from the airport and Parakar, a little at a time, to a concrete structure located at 11/8 Doushanbe Street in Yerevan’s Avan-Arindj neighborhood. He had rented the space and transformed it into a poultry processing and packaging unit. He placed an order for plastic packaging bearing the name Alaverdi Poultry Plant and sold the meat under that brand. 

On August 11, at the 11/8 Doushanbe Street address, police uncovered the Alaverdi Poultry Plant plastic packaging, acetic acid and potassium permanganate containers, 3 cast-iron bathtubs, two of which were empty. The third was full of uncut and cut chicken parts giving off a strong stench and coated in a strange white hue.

In the criminal case there is evidence that E. Mkhitaryan had completed the slaughter prior to May 20 and that the sale of the meat had started in April. Before supplying the poultry to the Nor Nork kindergartens, he had sold some to the Nor Zovk and Yeritsyanner chain of grocery stores. The inspector visited these stores to seize the chickens.

The director of Nor Zovk stated that the chain hadn’t obtained any poultry from individual proprietor Mkhitaryan and that there is no documentation proving the contrary. However, in testimony given on September 9, 2014, Mkhitaryan stated that he sold some 160 kilograms of chicken to the grocery chain. Documents in his possession show that he made 224 transactions with the Nor Zovk chain at 100 dram per transaction.

The Yeritsyanner supermarket chain reported that between April 15 and May 15, 2014, they purchased 118 kilograms of chicken and 29 young chicks from Mkhitaryan. All of it had been sold as of August 19, 2014.

Mkhitaryan states that he sold another 10-15 kilograms to a person he doesn’t know in Vanadzor through a deliveryman.

This data alone shows that he sold 293 kilograms of poultry; thrice the amount supplied to the Nor Nork kindergartens. According to an Armenian International Airports Ltd. bulletin, Mkhitaryan removed 4,189 kilograms of chicken from the Zvartnots warehouse between June 17 and July 15, 2014.

The preliminary investigative body declared its conclusions on September 17, stating that in all the samples taken from the poultry at the three Nor Nork kindergartens and the warehouses, there were traces of acetic acid and potassium permanganate, chemicals not permitted to be used in chicken processing.

 As a result of bacterial analysis of the poultry, of the samples taken from the three kindergartens, only levels of Mezofilayin aerobic and facultative anaerobic bacteria (MAFAM) were found above accepted norms.

In the poultry samples taken from the “Cargo” warehouse at Zvartnots Airport and the Parakar storehouse, levels of MAFAM were above normal. In the Zvartnots samples salmonella and Listeria monocytogene bacteria were found. In the opinion of health experts, such meat isn’t fit for later consumption.

Large quantities of chicken were kept at those warehouses – 5,000 kilograms at the Cargo 4 terminal warehouse; 4,500 kilograms at the Cargo 5 warehouse/refrigerator unit; and 2,300 kilograms at the Parakar facility.

The investigator was never able to reveal what happened to the 5,000 slaughtered birds. Mkhitaryan’s claim that the birds were burnt on site and destroyed was never backed up by other testimony.

The Investigative Committee never charged Armen Sargsyan, who heads the certification agency, with providing the company with false certificates which lead to false advertising being foisted on consumers. Sargsyan’s certificate stated that “the meat, with his full assurances, meets the technical code obligations for meat and eat products as stipulated in RA Decision N 1904 and N 1560.”

Mkhitaryan was never charged with selling large quantities of poultry unfit for consumption to the public, for tax evasion, for not registering employees, and for not paying them as per contract.   

Judge Armen Vardapetyan found that by fining Mkhitaryan 500,000 AMD social justice would be served. The court had nothing to say regarding destroying the other 12 tons of unfit poultry still being warehoused.

 

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