Bradford shop owners fined for selling rotten fruit

A HMI investigation has seen Bradford shop owners fined for selling rotten, damaged and incorrectly labelled fruit.

The owners of a Bradford shop have been fined for selling rotten, damaged and incorrectly labelled fruit following an investigation by the Horticultural Marketing Inspectorate (HMI).

Mohammad Haleem, age 36, and Mohammed Rahim, age 34, of Spencer Foods, in Spencer Road, admitted ten separate breaches of EU marketing standards for fresh horticultural produce when they appeared at Bradford Magistrates’ Court on Friday (14/11).

The offences related to three separate displays of grapes, Golden Rose apples and apricots, which were affected by soiling, bruising and rot respectively, plus cherries, lychees, peaches, oranges, two varieties of onions and spinach which were displayed without the required country of origin. The grapes were also incorrectly labelled.

The offences were found during at an HMI inspection visit to the shop on 5 February this year.


Haleem and Rahim were each fined £1,200. They were also ordered to pay costs of £360 and a victims’ surcharge of £240.

In this particular case the prosecution followed a series of visits over 16 months. Between August 2012 and November 2013, the store failed ten successive visits from inspectors where advice and guidance was offered, but inspections found persistent poor quality and inadequate labelling."