Man guilty of selling fake halal meat to restaurants

A food wholesaler has been found guilty of fraud by falsely distributing chicken as halal meat and putting unsafe food on the market.

Hamil Miah, 46, from Cardiff, was the owner of Universal Food Wholesale Limited.

Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court heard chicken from Miah's warehouse in Bessemer Road, Cardiff was falsely sold as Halal meat to restaurants and takeaways.

He has been remanded in custody until the sentencing, but judge Vanessa Francis told Miah he could face up to 10 years in prison.

After deliberating for three hours on Friday, a jury found Miah guilty of 10 counts of fraud and food safety offences.

During the two-week trial, the jury heard Miah created a "smokescreen" of companies to mislead investigators, while he was actually running the entire operation himself.

The jury was also told the takeaways and restaurants believed they were dealing with a number of different companies and all believed they were buying halal chicken.

Some of the chicken was bought as halal, but poor hygiene and cross-contamination in the warehouse meant none of it could be truly classified as such.

There were also long periods of time when the warehouse did not receive halal meat from wholesalers, but continued to supply chicken to restaurants and takeaways who believed it was halal.

The sell-by date of some chicken was altered and labels did not have the correct information on them to enable the source of the meat to be properly traced.

Miah claimed he only ran Universal Food Wholesale Ltd, which used pre-processed halal chicken, and said on-site processing was handled by Universal Poultry Ltd, run by his childhood friend Noaf Rahman.

He denied any involvement in day-to-day processing, though Rahman had previously pleaded guilty to multiple food safety offences.

The court heard inspectors from Cardiff council and the Food Standards Agency had made multiple visits to the warehouse and suggested improvements.

There was also covert monitoring of the business, which revealed unrefrigerated chicken deliveries to west Wales and a van dumping waste at a tip before being reloaded with food without being cleaned.

A pre-sentence report was ordered for Miah, with sentencing for both him and Rahman to take place together.

Miah was granted bail, but the judge said she was "not making any promises" regarding sentence, telling him he would need to "get his affairs in order".