MOULDY chicken which brought a visit from environmental health inspectors led to closure of a family bakery after more than 30 years of trading, a court heard today.

Harrogate magistrates were told how a would-be customer at the Hookstone Bakery at Woodlands Corner, Harrogate, called in the borough council after spotting three patches of mould on coronation chicken being sold as sandwich filling.

When the bakery, part of a chain of 20 run by Hadfields of Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, pleaded guilty to failing to comply with food safety by offering contaminated chicken for human consumption, Glenn Sharpe, prosecuting.

He said it was still on sale the next morning when environmental health officer John Matthews paid a visit.

Mr Sharpe said the company, which was fined £800 with £600 costs, had kept the chicken container in a refrigerated display which also held things like raw and cooked meat - a high-risk situation - cream products and egg custards.

Their temperatures should have been no higher than four degrees centigrade but tests showed they were between 13 and 15.9 degrees.

Rodney Noon, defending, said the shop manageress had been on holiday but the woman in charge had a hygiene certificate after attending a Harrogate Council course.

The bakery company was a wholly-owned subsidiary of a chain operating in Leeds and Huddersfield.

It told employees to call in engineers if refrigeration unit temperatures exceeded eight degrees and a call should have gone out two days before the contamination incident when the managing director was told of a "slightly high" reading.

The company said it had no excuse for what had happened and the shop, which was outside the parent company's core operation area, had been closed and staff had lost their jobs.