Claims that a butcher in Gozo was allegedly selling Maltese sausage made with cat and dog meat were found to be not true, The Malta Independent is informed.
Both the Health Department and the police were involved in the investigations, but neither of them have found any of the claims to be true.
No people have been hospitalised, as comments on the social media suggested, this newspaper has been told.
The claims have been doing the round for the past week, but spread like wildfire on the social media today. Even the Association for Abandoned Animals reacted to them, saying that this "is not a fictional story".
Cats and dogs were turned into sausage in Gozo for human consumption, and people were hospitalized, the association wrote.
Unfortunately there is only complete silence from the authorities altough this incident happened weeks ago, it added.
But it did turn out that, according to sources who spoke to The Malta Independent, investigations were carried out by the authorities concerned long before the story went viral on Friday.
"We were looking into for more than a week," a source told this newspaper. "And from the investigations that were carried out, it turned out that all the claims were unfounded".
The police also checked with the Gozo General Hospital to see if there had been any admissions linked to the story.
They found that there had been no people who were hospitalised with symptoms that could be in any way connected consuming food produced from sick animals.
This is the kind of story that spreads quickly in social media times, the source said. It has caused distress and unneccessary panic when what was being said was not true at all.