A north London shopkeeper has been fined £1,420 for selling rotten fruit and vegetables despite 16 visits from inspectors and repeated warnings to rectify the issue.
Sadin Kilic, owner of Bin Diyar Ltd which trades under the signage Hilal Supermarket, in Edmonton, north London, was sentenced at Tottenham Magistrates Court on 25 June 2015.
He had been visited by the Horticultural Marketing Inspectorate (HMI) between 2012 and 2014, where inspectors found nine displays that did not conform to EU marketing rules.
Of the nine, three failed to meet the lowest marketable quality permitted and included rots in aubergines, pears and limes, while eight displays also failed to meet the statutory labelling requirements.
Inspectors said that one display of Dutch aubergines were offered for sale with “advanced stages of deterioration”, resulting in this consignment failing to meet the lowest marketable standard permitted for 25 per cent rots.
Another display of Belgian pears failed to meet the lowest marketable standard permitted for 46 per cent rots, which presented themselves as “shallow, wet discoloured rots”, affecting both the skin and the flesh of the fruit.
Kilic pleaded guilty to eight of the nine charges – the charge relating to the limes was dropped as he claimed they were not on offer for sale. He was fined £900 for the offences, £500 for the prosecution’s costs and a £20 victim surcharge.
In sentencing, the magistrates observed that this was something that had been going for many years despite multiple warnings. “In this particular case, the prosecution followed a series of risk based inspection visits to the shop over nearly two and a half years,” said Rural Payments Agency operations director, Paul Caldwell.
“Between August 2012 and November 2014, the store received 16 visits from inspectors where advice on how to comply was offered,” he added.
“Prosecution is only used as a last resort and we will always try to gain statutory compliance with the marketing standard regulations through advice, guidance and instruction.”
