A DURSLEY farmer who tried to put three over-aged cattle into the human food chain, causing a potential BSE risk, has been ordered to pay almost £6,000 in fines and costs.

At Gloucester Crown Court on Wednesday, Judge Jamie Tabor QC said he accepted that Colin Clutterbuck's offences were not deliberate fraud but the result of inefficiency.

He fined Clutterbuck, 46, of Standle Farm, Shandle Lane, Stinchcombe, £1,900 for three offences of offering cattle for sale with false passports showing that they were aged under 30 months - the maxium permitted age for beef cattle.

In fact, all three animals were well above 30 months and could potentially have been carrying the BSE virus into the food chain, said the judge.

As well as the fine, the judge ordered Clutterbuck to pay £1,000 defence costs and £3,000 towards the costs of Gloucestershire Trading Standards, who brought the prosecution.

Clutterbuck, whose 400-acre farm is principally dairy, had admitted offering an animal for sale with a cattle passport that claimed it was born on June 16 2000, when it was in fact born earlier.

He also admitted offering another two animals for sale in a similar fashion, the passport claiming they were born on June 21 2000 when they were born earlier.

David Sapiecha, prosecuting, said that in December 2002 Clutterbuck sent 11 beef steers to F R Drury and Sons' abattoir to be slaughtered. At the abattoir the animals' teeth were inspected and one was found to have eight teeth and the others six.

This indicated that all were more than 30 months in age and a specialist vet believed one to be a year and three months older than the maximum permitted by the BSE regulations. He estimated the others to be ten months and eight days older.

"All three of these cattle were about to enter the human food chain when their identities were unknown and their age was over 30 months," said Mr Sapiecha. He claimed that if the animals had genuinely been below 30 months they would have been worth £1,600. But their true value was only about £930.

When interviewed, Clutterbuck told trading standards investigators the cattle had lost their ear tags and he was unable to work back and establish precisely which animals they were.

Ian Dixey, defending, said: "I wish to make it clear that his guilty pleas were made on the basis that there was a genuine mistake in the paperwork here and there was no fraudulent intent involved at all."

Mr Dixey added that the defence did not accept the valuations suggested by the Crown and believed that in fact the true difference in value for the three animals was only about £200.

Neither did the defence accept the prosecution estimates of the true age of the cattle.

"You cannot age them to the day and the month like that," he said. ends