The owners of Barn Bacon Limited have been sentenced to a combined suspended imprisonment of three years and seven months for fraudulent activity, after selling EU-sourced bacon, which was labelled free-range and locally produced.
The two businessmen, father and son Andrew and William Smith, were caught making misleading claims of their bacon products being “British and free-range”, when the Nottinghamshire County Council’s Trading Standards team found that “one of their main suppliers since 2011 sourced their bacon from the EU – namely Germany, Poland and Denmark”.
The council has highlighted that the legitimate supplier was “unaware that their products were being repackaged and falsely labelled as British produce by Barn Bacon”.
According to the council, many of the duo’s offences involved selling misleading bacon products at various markets in Nottinghamshire, including Southwell Market and the Collingham Show.
William Smith of Park Farm Cottage, in Kneesall, pleaded guilty to five fraud offences dating from April 2012 to February 2015, while Andrew Smith of Old Hall Farm, Newark, pleaded guilty to one fraud offence, dating to 1st June 2013.
William received a 19-month sentence, suspended for two years, along with 180 hours unpaid work and costs of £15,000, while Andrew was given a two-year sentence, suspended for two years, 200 hours unpaid work and costs of £5,000.
Trading Standards manager at Nottinghamshire County Council, Claudine White, noted: “This company’s blatant false claims have allowed it to sell their bacon products at a higher price than would be expected for standard products and gave it access to pitches at festivals to the detriment of legitimate traders.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
