Spanish meat production association denies Contador's allegations

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The biggest association of Spanish meat producers, Asoprovac, has reacted firmly to Alberto Contador's claim that the ingestion of Clenbuterol-tainted meat caused his doping positive. The association, which accounts for 85 percent of the country's meat production industry, denied the possibility of contaminated meat on the Spanish market and has asked the public prosecutor to investigate the case.

In a press release issued February 15, the day Contador was cleared by the Spanish cycling federation, Asoprovac confirmed that it had viewed the defence dossier submitted to the federation by Contador's lawyers, and said that several of the points made were untrue.

"The rider attacks this production sector with impunity and falsifies the truth, calling into question the exhaustive control systems that are applied to bovine meat in the European Union and also in our country," Asoprovac declared.

Contador notably stated that in Spain, cattle were being illegally treated with Clenbuterol. "This is absolutely false," the association stated. "In 2010, the authorities carried out 14,179 controls, and there was not one positive case for Clenbuterol."

Contador further alleged that the meat he ingested came from "an animal that did not receive any veterinary control whatsoever". According to the association, if this were true, it would be "a case of professional negligence with a public health risk that should be formally denounced. To comply with the current legislation, every animal destined for human consumption has to be submitted to veterinary inspection ante and post mortem."

Asoprovac also noted with surprise that the Contador defence camp did not "formally denounce the case of crime against public health of which he allegedly was the victim" as soon as the positive doping case was announced in August last year, and that instead, it was Asoprovac that has requested an investigation of the affair.

"Contador, whether or not he is guilty of doping, is definitely guilty of trying to clear his image [...] at the cost of a production sector on which, directly or indirectly, more than 150,000 families in Spain depend. And all of this without showing even one piece of proof that that the Clenbuterol found in his urine effectively came from eating bovine meat."