Direct Halal Meat and Poultry Ltd meat puts ‘lives in danger’

Oct 26 2009 By Andrew Hirst

FILTHY food dipped in bleach to make it appear fresher is thought to have been sold across Kirklees.

The revelations came after two brothers were jailed for running a filthy meat cutting plant.

Food experts believe lives were put at risk as the business racked up huge profits.

Yakub Yusuf, his brother Ibrahim Yusuf and his stepson Nabil Allibou ran Direct Halal Meat and Poultry Ltd in Dewsbury between October 2007 and March last year.

The business shipped halal poultry and red meat to shops all over the north of England – including Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Ravensthorpe – and is estimated to have clocked up £500,000 sales in just over four months of business.

Leeds Crown Court heard on Friday how Yakub Yusuf, 58, of Warley Road, Bradford, was already banned from running a food company when he began the venture with his 48-year-old brother in the autumn of 2007.

Yakub Yusuf was jailed for four-and-a-half years and Ibrahim Yusuf, of South Street, Savile Town, Dewsbury, to 30 months for a string of serious breaches of food health and safety law.

Nabil Allibou, a 25-year-old interpreter and university student who speaks four languages, financed the plant with £25,000 while the brothers ran the business.

The court heard that Yakub Yusuf had previously managed an abattoir in Shelf, Halifax, which had seriously breached food hygiene regulations – dramatically leaking animal waste out of the premises to form what was described as ‘a river of blood’.

The breach lead to a prohibition order in 2004 banning him from managing a food company again.

Yet the brothers stepped in to run a meat-cutting plant when a company called AF Halal Meat and Poultry lost its Food Standards Agency licence and subsequently closed down in July 2007.

Three months later, Allibou approached the owners of the property to take over the lease from AF Halal Meat, acting as director for a new company called Direct Halal Meat.

The Yusuf brothers then ran it on a day-to-day basis.

The company began operations on October 27, 2007.

Leeds Crown Court heard how Allibou had very little involvement in the unhygienic plant at the Bretton Street Enterprise Centre, Savile Town, Dewsbury, which had no authorisation from the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Just four days after the Yusuf brothers had opened business, they were rumbled following a chance visit by an Food Standards Agency representative.

Prosecutor Howard Shaw said: "The unauthorised operation came to the attention of the authorities within a few days by accident."

An FSA representative called on the premises in error, believing she was attending another premises.