A company director who allowed "a river of blood" to flow from his filthy abattoir into a nearby beck has been jailed for six months.

Bradford Crown Court was told how Yakub Yusuf, 49, set up sham companies to front his slaughterhouse at Shelf and would let animal waste leak from the pumping station into Blackshaw Beck.

Roger Birch, prosecuting, told the court there was a hole in the wall of the station and the resulting spillage had created a channel in a field that led down to the water. "It was filled with blood and animal contents - effectively like a river of blood," he said.

The beck was polluted to such an extent that all animals living in the water could have been killed and Mr Birch added that it would take several months for the beck to overcome the pollution.

The court was told that Yusuf began running the abattoir, in Shelf Moor Road, in 1999 under his own name but would later run it under the guise of various different company names and get unsuspecting friends, who could not read or write English, to sign all the documents.

Recorder Clive Heaton was told that the Shelf abattoir was kept in a dilapidated state and breached numerous Food Standard regulations.

Mr Birch said most of the rooms were filthy, equipment and aprons were caked in dried blood and nobody had attempted to clean it for several months.

Yusuf was also in breach of regulations surrounding TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy), the sheep form of BSE. The court was told that sheep's heads had been left in bins with domestic rubbish and carcasses had not been properly disposed of.

Mr Birch said Yusuf faced three similar charges relating to a slaughterhouse he ran at Wakefield Road, Ossett, and had ignored numerous warnings about the state of his premises.

Yusuf, of Warley Drive, Bradford, pleaded guilty to 25 counts of breaching Food Standards Agency regulations and one count of breaching Environment Agency regulations. His brother, Ibrahim Yusuf, had faced similar charges but at an earlier hearing the Crown had offered no evidence and the matters had been dropped.

Richard Gioserano, mitigating, said that Yusuf had not set up the sham companies to try to avoid prosecution for the condition of the abattoir.

The court heard that Yusuf, who still owes the Meat Hygiene Agency £100,000, was banned from being a company director for 12 years.

Passing sentence, Recorder Heaton told Yusuf that although he could not say whether anyone had become ill as a result of his meat, it was essential to minimise the risk to public health.

After the court hearing, the Environment Agency's area environment manager Gerard Morris said: "This individual was warned on many occasions about the way he was carrying out his business at the abattoir."

He said the court had also banned Yusuf from working in the food industry for seven years.