£8,000 fine hits animal exporter
Page 12
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by Jack Lawrence
• A livestock haulier has been hit with an 18,000 fine for not paying a Meat and Livestock Commission levy on animal exports.
Richard Coate, of Castle House, Bishop's Lydeard, near Taunton, Somerset failed to make returns for February to September last year. At the hearing on 22 February, which Coate failed to attend, Taunton magistrates also ordered him to pay £500 costs.
Richard Barrowclough, prosecuting, said a 26p levy on sheep was payable by exporters in a scheme which required them to make monthly returns, even if they did not take animals abroad. Coate was a "substantial livestock haulier", said Barrowclough, and he had failed to make eight returns, despite repeated requests.
His exports in 1992 ranged
from just under 2,000 sheep in April to 15,000 in June. Ban-owdough said "this is not the first time he (Coate) has been involved in matters of this sort". Coate was convicted of five similar charges last May and fined £250, with £50 costs. And last December he received a penalty of 12,200 with .C4,200 costs after admitting three charges of exporting sheep to France without health certificates.
Last year the RSPCA called on junior Agriculture Minister Angela Browning to hold an urgent inquiry into a legal loophole on animal exports, after a case in which Somerset's county trading standards department offered no evidence against Coate. It was alleged he transported animals for more than 13 hours without rest, food or water. The department had been advised that English courts had no jurisdiction over offences committed abroad,