One man died and five others were hospitalized after contracting anthrax at a farm in the Omsk region that supplied horse meat for pelmeni sold in Moscow and other regions, Interfax reported Monday.
All six victims fell ill after being hired to cut meat from diseased animals, said Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service. Horses started dying at the farm in June, but the farm's owners hid the deaths, he said.
Lifenews.ru said about 2 1/2 tons of horse meat with anthrax was supplied to Darina, a pelmeni producer. The meat was confiscated, as were shipments of the company's pelmeni in the Moscow, Omsk, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Tver regions, the Novy Region news agency reported.