A Mexican drug cartel not only forced vendors to buy chicken at wildly inflated prices, but it also sold them chicken “not fit for human consumption,” investigators concluded this week.
Prosecutors in the State of Mexico this week concluded a monthslong investigation that found the hyperviolent Familia Michoacana cartel had been forcing small stores and market vendors to buy chicken at almost twice the normal price.
But to add insult to injury, test results released Monday on chicken found at one cartel-controlled warehouse in the city of Toluca — just west of Mexico City — additives, some of which prosecutors said were potentially cancer-causing.
State prosecutors said they are “continuing with investigations of two warehouses seized on March 27 in Toluca because of their presumed links with extortion, and crimes against consumers.”
“The seized food products are not fit for human consumption,” the report said, citing the presence of potassium and sodium tartrate, among other additives found in the chicken.
The investigation began in December, when, days before Christmas, f …