A Tel Aviv court has taken a tough stance on food smuggling, slamming a repeat offender with a six-month prison sentence. The offender, a 50-year-old man from Bnei Brak, was convicted of smuggling eggs from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas without a permit.
The eggs were produced by Arab farmers in Judea and Samaria and illegally sold in central Israel. The defendant committed similar offenses on a number of occasions, the court found.
The defendant was charged with four crimes: illegally transporting eggs from Arab areas in Judea and Samaria to Israeli territory, transporting eggs without refrigeration, falsifying a seal of approval, and using the seal of a company not authorized to approve eggs. The crimes could have lead to the outbreak of serious illnesses, prosecutors said.
Police believe the defendant smuggled a total of roughly 300,000 eggs. The eggs were sold in Bnei Brak, Elad, Tel Aviv, Yafo and elsewhere.
In addition to six months in jail, the defendant was sentenced to 18 months parole and a NIS 50,000 fine. If he is caught committing a similar crime in the future, he will face an automatic NIS 100,000 fine.
The Ministry of Agriculture has pushed for harsher punishments for those who smuggle food from PA areas or who illegally sell food that has not been inspected. Selling food that may not meet Israeli health standards endangers the public, ministry officials said.
Eggs produced in PA-controlled territories are usually produced with no veterinary oversight whatsoever, they warned.
Those who sell such food illegally do so purely in order to make a higher profit, and would stop if courts would make the crime no longer worth the risk, the ministry argues.