Direct Halal Meat and Poultry Ltd took over £500,000 in four months, selling halal poultry and red meat to shops across the country. Today, however, the man who ran the company was jailed for four and a half years for massive breaches of food health and safety law.

Yakub Yusuf, who ran the business along with his brother Ibrahim Yusuf and stepson Nabil Allibou, was found guilty of running a “filthy” meat cutting plant, which had no authorisation from the Food Standards Agency whatsoever. Luckily, the plant was discovered quite early when a representative from the FSA happened to spot a lorry unloading sheep carcasses and made some enquiries. The FSA proceeded to monitor the plant through CCTV cameras, which show grotesque breaches of food safety standards, even showed meat left on the floor being gnawed by a cat before taken into the plant! When Police and Environmental Health Officers raided the plant, they found decomposing meat in a mincing machine and no soap or drying facilities anywhere; the meat caresses had also been left entirely exposed and there was even a plastic tub containing poultry that had been bleached to look cleaner!

Worryingly, this wasn’t the first time Yusuf had been found guilty of food hygiene breaches. In 2004 he was banned from managing a food company again after his Halifax-based abattoir was found to have multiple severe breaches of food hygiene regulations, including a “river of blood” flowing from the premises.