Russia: region offers to exchange "alcohol for food" after series of deaths

Authorities in the Orenburg region in central Russia announced on Sunday that they had offered local residents the opportunity to exchange alcohol for food, after dozens of deaths linked to trafficked drinks.

The consumption of adulterated alcohol containing a large amount of methanol, a highly toxic product, this week caused the hospitalization of 67 people, 34 of whom died, according to a statement from local authorities, quoted by the official press agency TASS.

The initial toll, unveiled Friday, reported 17 dead, but it doubled in two days after further hospitalizations.

The quantity of toxic alcohol already sold not being known, the authorities suggested to the inhabitants of the eastern part of the Orenburg region to exchange their "alcoholic drinks of questionable quality" for food products in a network local supermarkets, according to TASS. The price of the selection of food products offered "is several times higher than that of alcohol", assured the local authorities in the press release, quoted by the agency.

Thousands of suspicious alcohol bottles were seized from shops and warehouses in the area for examination, according to local police, who said several of them contained methanol.

The local branch of the Russian Investigation Committee, the body responsible for the main criminal investigations, announced for its part that it had made around ten arrests of producers and sellers of adulterated alcohol.

Consumer products

Fatal incidents related to the consumption of adulterated alcohol or toxic substitutes are not uncommon in Russia, a country where 21 million people are below the poverty line.

In 2016, more than 60 people were killed in Irkutsk in Siberia after ingesting a counterfeit hawthorn oil bath oil, which contained toxic methanol.

The Russian authorities had toughened the legislation after this incident, but alcoholic products, such as ethanol, or home-made spirits remain common consumer products, in particular due to the regulation of the sale of spirits and 'increase in their price to fight against alcoholism.