Pair sold bogus meat stored in filthy conditions

Sausages, burgers and bacon purporting to be ostrich, goat and wild boar from Lionheart Marketing contained nothing of the sort.

The products were fraudulently labelled and health officers found some stored in unhygienic conditions in a garage at the home of Darren Jinks and Sarah Beckett.

The couple also leased a unit on Stafford's Tollgate Industrial Estate where neighbouring businesses complained of feathers and the smell of rotting meat. The unit had no licence for meat processing.

Jinks, aged 48, Curlew Close, Uttoxeter was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years. His partner Beckett, aged 40, of the same address, was conditionally discharged for 12 months. They were also ordered to pay £6,000 costs between them.

Lionheart's illicit operations were discovered when Staffordshire County Council's trading standards team raided premises in Stafford, Uttoxeter and South Derbyshire last year, seizing packaged meat and equipment.

Mr Tony Watkin, prosecuting, said although Beckett was the official director of Lionheart, it was Jinks who effectively ran it.

In July 2012 the company took over a meat processing plant at Crackley Gate Farm, Crackley Gates but in June the following year the Food Standards Authority revoked its licence because of concerns over hygiene.

"The defendants were fully aware the business was not permitted to carry out the processing of meat and Jinks gave assurances these premises would not be used," Mr Watkin said.

"From February 2013 to February 2014 Lionheart did not stop processing meat and game and continued with that processing with false indications."

Mr Watkin said Lionheart effectively 'stole' the authorisation label of a well-respected butcher because meat was being prepared without authorisation.

By September 2013 the defendants were using their home address and the unit in Stafford for their business. Their home was searched in February 2014 and large packages of meat, labelled and unlabelled were found in freezers in the garage. The garage was dirty, dusty, covered in cobwebs and a cat was free to roam around.

The value of the meat was put at £8,000 and samples were sent away for analysis.

"The ostrich burgers contained no ostrich, but chicken," he added. "The wild venison found chicken in the mix, the venison sausages - chicken and pork. There was no goat in the goat sausage, no wild boar in the bacon."

Jinks admitted two charges of making or supplying articles for use in fraud between 2013 and 2015, while Beckett admitted fraud dating back to January last year.

The pair both admitted placing food on the market which was 'unsafe' in April 2014, breaching food safety and hygiene regulations.

Miss Elizabeth Power, for Jinks, said: "He was under a lot of pressure financially.

Mr Paul Hiatt, for Beckett, said: "She had a minor role, she stayed at home to look after their young son."