Milk fraud is repeated after 15 years in Uberaba; sector says that cases are one-off

The recent discovery of a group suspected of adulterating milk with caustic soda in Uberaba, in the Triângulo Mineiro, echoes a fraud discovered 15 years ago in the same city and that scared the country.

The Ouro Branco operation, launched by the PF (Federal Police) in October 2007, discovered a milk fraud scheme carried out by two mining cooperatives, one of them in Uberaba, Copervale (Cooperativa dos Produtores de Leite do Vale do Rio Grande).

A chemical formula consisting of caustic soda, citric acid, salt, sodium citrate, sugar and water was included in long-life milk to increase volume and shelf life. As a result, profits also grew.

Eighteen people were sentenced to prison, including managers of the cooperative, technicians, employees and even an agricultural inspector. Of these, 14 employees made a plea bargain and had reduced sentences.

Now, four people were arrested in July in the city on suspicion of having embezzled and tampered with milk. With them, 500 liters of adulterated product were seized, in addition to 650 liters of a mixture used in fraud, diesel, caustic soda, ammonium sulfate and other goods, such as smartphones and vehicles.

The police estimate is that the group had been adulterating the milk with lye for at least a month.

The frauds do not compare in terms of volume and sophistication, but they raise an alert that possible irregularities are still present in the mining dairy segment, even 15 years after the famous operation that made the PF collect milk samples in at least four states and generated fear about consumption in the population.

“[As fraudes] They are extremely punctual, but due to the damage to the image of the sector that they offer, they should have a very strict punishment,” said USP (University of São Paulo) professor Marcos Fava Neves, a specialist in agribusiness.

He assesses that case records are small compared to the size of the Brazilian dairy chain.

Milk fraud, in different ways, has been recorded in recent years across the country. Last year, for example, the Justice of Paraíba upheld the conviction of a group that mixed powdered milk with powdered whey and sold it as whole milk, with the aim of increasing profits.

President of Abraleite (Brazilian Association of Milk Producers), Geraldo Borges said that the sector does not condone fraud and that the episodes recorded in Uberaba do not represent the dairy sector in the country.

“In the formal market, the existence of fraud is practically nil and Abraleite’s recommendation is that consumers always look for formal products. Inspection by the competent authorities avoids risks of fraud in milk and its derivatives”, he said.

The entity represents more than 1.1 million milk-producing properties in the country.

Borges stated that the raw milk that comes out of the dairy farms is pure and without additives and undergoes tests in dairy products to prove this purity.

“The fraud detected in Uberaba is a punctual occurrence and does not represent the Brazilian dairy sector at all, which is made up of serious producers and industries that supply the finest food of all to the fifth largest population in the world. Frauds like this must be repressed and their perpetrators punished according to the law”, said Borges.

Copervale 15 years later

And how is Copervale, the pivot of the milk fraud 15 years ago? The cooperative has been closed since 2013 due to administrative problems, it accumulates million-dollar debt and, from the old headquarters on BR-262, today there are only ruins.

The area of ​​more than 80 thousand square meters of the industrial complex was sold at auction in October 2020 for BRL 8.98 million (BRL 10.76 million adjusted for inflation).

The Centenário brand, which belonged to Copervale and was involved in the 2007 scandal, was previously sold, also at auction, for R$ 61,200 (R$ 74,200, also corrected).

Although there are no more production conditions in the former cooperative, Copervale maintains a website with documents related to creditors and judicial recovery and says that it is fighting to revoke the bankruptcy process. THE Sheet unable to contact administrators.

Market faces difficulties

The dairy sector, like others in the economy, has faced difficulties in recent years, but prices have improved recently. In 2021, the sector returned to the level of 2015 in sales of long-life milk, due to the worsening of the pandemic and the negative effects on the economy.

According to data from ABLV (Brazilian Association of the Long-Life Dairy Industry), there was a 3.7% reduction in the total milk market and, within it, a 3.5% drop in the volume of long-life milk last year.

In addition to the reduction in production and consumption, the association’s report shows that 2021 may have been the worst in recent years for the profitability of the dairy sector, with significant increases in production costs, particularly for in natura milk, in addition to fuels, packaging, labor and services.

In recent months, however, prices have reacted throughout the chain, according to a report by Itaú BBA. For the producer, the price of the liter reached R$ 3.19 in the average of the country according to the Cepea measurement, which represents 38% more in relation to the same month of the previous year.

In negotiations between industries, the price went from R$ 4 a liter. “Behind these increases is the reduction in milk supply over the first half”, says an excerpt from the report, which also points out that the rise in prices in the dairy chain reflects much more the contraction of supply than the improvement in demand.