Farmerjailed forlivestockoffences

TRADING standards bosses yesterday welcomed the jailing of a North Yorkshire farmer who kept livestock in squalid and dangerous conditions.

Michael Hawkswell, from Thorpe Underwood, near York, was given a six-month sentence for breaches of animal health and welfare legislation following an investigation which uncovered breaches such as keeping open bags of pig body parts as feed.

As well as jailing him, magistrates in Harrogate also banned him from keeping any animal for 10 years.

Enquiries began in January this year involving North Yorkshire County Council Trading Standards, North Yorkshire Police and Animal Health (Executive Agency).

Officers visited premises at Thorpe Underwood and found livestock being kept by Hawkswell in “squalid and dangerous conditions”, according to trading standards officials.

The animals were being kept in an environment that was unsuitable to meet their needs and not provided with sufficient feed and water to satisfy their daily well-being, it was said.

Officers also found open bags on the premises containing pig body parts to which other livestock and poultry could gain access. This breached regulations concerning the correct disposal of livestock carcasses and posed a potential risk of spreading disease.

Hawkswell was already serving a disqualification ban for keeping any animal for previous convictions for cruelty to farm animals.

In court, he admitted eight charges.

Of those eight, four were for breaching the existing ban on four separate occasions which included trying to sell poultry at a livestock market whilst being banned.

County Councillor Clare Wood, executive member for trading standards and planning services, said: “We will continue to take action against those individuals who flout animal health and welfare rules which are in place to protect livestock to ensure they are kept in the highest of welfare standards and to also to reduce the risk of any disease outbreaks.”