'Maggot Pete' gets six years for food fraud

The "founding father" of a £1m food fraud that saw unfit and diseased meat sold to hospitals, schools and leading supermarkets, was sentenced to six years imprisonment in his absence yesterday.

Peter Roberts - known in the meat trade as Maggot Pete - has been on the run in southern Europe since police uncovered his role in the six-year-long racket, in which 450 tons of chicken and turkey, in most cases unfit even to feed to pets, was doctored to make it appear healthy.

The 68-year-old, who failed to appear for sentence at Nottingham Crown Court, was handed a five-year prison term after he was earlier convicted of conspiracy to defraud and a separate one-year sentence for a bail act offence.

Jurors in an earlier trial had heard that he was at the head of a chain of supply that stretched from his Denby Poultry Products firm, in Derbyshire, to businesses in Northampton, Milton Keynes and Bury, who supplied the produce, in many cases unwittingly, to about 600 customers across the UK.

The court was told the food was butchered in sewage-ridden and rat-infested premises in Denby, and delivered in vans crawling with insects.

Sentencing Roberts, of Francis Street, Derby, Judge Richard Benson said: "Under the auspices of Peter Roberts, the business turned into a dreadful enterprise, which exploited the vulnerability of the general public.

"If he had not been the founding father none of this would have happened."

Four men have already been jailed for their part in the conspiracy and a fifth received a suspended sentence.

All five admitted a charge of conspiracy to defraud. Roberts was convicted by a jury after he denied the same offence.

Sentencing the other gang members, Judge Richard Benson said it had been a "wicked and dangerous" fraud which put the general public at risk.

He added: "Anyone in their right mind wouldn't have eaten the food you put into the human food chain had they known what it was."