AN abattoir boss has been ordered to pay £20,000 after hygiene inspectors found that he was selling meat older than labelled.

Eight sheep carcasses were discovered at Stockton Butchers Slaughtering Company bearing false quality marks, Teesside Crown Court was told.

The fact they had been falsified meant that the meat may have been more than a year old and therefore not considered as lamb.

Company director Michael Broad, 50, of Aiskew Farm, Aiskew, near Bedale, North Yorkshire, admitted the use of an unauthorised stamp at the Yarm Road slaughterhouse, in Stockton, in June 2001 and May last year.

But he maintained that neither he nor senior managers knew anything about the incident.

The offence was uncovered when a meat hygiene inspector noticed discrepancies in the number of carcasses he was inspecting in May last year.

The company has a £15m annual turnover and slaughters 2,500 sheep, 300 cows and 300 pigs a week.

Roger Moore, prosecuting, said: "The stamps were not official, but had been used for whatever reason.

"This is probably not based on pure economics, and while it is clear that lamb gets a better price than mutton we are talking about quite marginal figures, so it would not be worth doing for money."

Jeremy Freedman, defending, said only eight suspect carcasses had been found over a two-year period in which the abattoir had slaughtered about 250,000 sheep.

He said: "Why they were not properly stamped remains a mystery. There would have been damage if they had been allowed to enter the food chain, but this has not happened. Someone has been appointed to make sure this never happens again."

Judge Tony Briggs said he would not hesitate in jailing the person responsible for the false quality marks if identified. "The mere existence and use of a false stamp is a very serious matter and the meat hygiene service was set up in the wake of concern about the safety of meat," he said.

"The use of the stamp could have caused very considerable harm and been detrimental to the public."

The company was fined £15,000 and ordered to pay £5,000 towards the prosecution's costs, which totalled £36,000.