HIALEAH GARDENS, Fla. – A horse meat sting in a Hialeah Gardens Home Depot parking lot led to the arrest of a Miami Lakes man on a felony charge Wednesday, according to police.
Miami-Dade police said an informant tipped them off Monday that a horse had been slaughtered for its meat and police coordinated to set up a deal to purchase it from Alain Arencibia-Diaz.
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According to police, the undercover informant met the 39-year-old in the parking lot of the Home Depot at 13895 W. Okeechobee Road to complete the transaction Wednesday afternoon.
The informant gave Arencibia-Diaz $500 and, in return, got a large black plastic bag containing roughly 40 pounds of the illicit meat, an arrest report states.
That’s when police said officers moved in to arrest the Cuban national on a charge of buying, selling, or possessing horse meat, a third-degree felony.
Arencibia-Diaz was no longer listed in Miami-Dade jail records as of Thursday morning.
According to Michigan State University’s Animal Legal & Historical Center, “Florida makes it unlawful for any person to sell in the markets of this state horse meat for human consumption unless the horse meat is clearly stamped, marked, and described as horse meat for human consumption or to knowingly transport, distribute, sell, purchase, or possess horse meat for human consumption that is not clearly stamped, marked, and described as horse meat for human consumption or horse meat that is not acquired from a licensed slaughterhouse.”
There are no licensed slaughterhouses for horse meat in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.