UK: Director sentenced for selling fake organics

The 41-year-old director of One Food Limited in the UK was jailed for 27 months for selling organic products that were no such, and also received a six-year directorship ban, reports The Guardian. His wife who had worked as a secretary for the company was also given a sentence suspended for two years, as well as community work, directorship ban. The operations manager was also sentenced. An investigation by Trading Standards officers had revealed that the company director, along with his wife and the other manager, had bought non-organic ingredients from supermarkets, and had employees repackage them before they were sold across the country.

In 2007, Trading Standards officers received information that the company was receiving deliveries of what were suspected to be non-organic ingredients. Trading Standards bought items online from the company's website, which claimed to provide organic, natural and ethical meat, produce and grocery items. "Organic salmon" bought from the site was then found to contain a synthetic additive used in feed for farmed salmon. When officers raided the premises they found paperwork showing non-organic ingredients had been bought. Former employees also told investigators the company directors were making regular purchases of non-organic ingredients from Tesco and Waitrose stores, and that they were asked to remove non-organic ingredients from their original packaging and to repack them. In the firm's final year of trading, at least 41 % of ingredients bought to manufacture "organic" products were non-organic, records showed.

The Guardian