A Bradford halal butcher who was caught in possession of unfit meat from an Ilkley farm has been ordered to pay £5,000.

When officers from Bradford Council raided Shabir Wahid's shop in Willow Street, Girlington, Bradford, in May 2003 they found sheep and lamb carcasses that had been illegally slaughtered, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday. Prosecutor Giles Bridge told the court there was a risk that the meat, which could have been infected, may have found its way into the human food chain, although it was accepted that nobody had become ill after eating anything sold in the shop.

The court was told that officers had become suspicious after finding a carcass without the required stamp and noticed that it had signs of faecal contamination.

They uncovered four necks of mutton in the cold store with the spinal cord attached as well as other pieces of offal. Wahid, 46, of Bingley Road, Heaton, had denied knowing that the meat had been stored on his premises.

But the father-of-three was found guilty at trial in May of charges of possessing meat unfit for human consumption, possessing meat for sale which had not been subject to the necessary processes, and possessing specified risk material other than at authorised premises. Judge Linda Sutcliffe was told that the meat had been bought from a farm at Langbar where lambs were slaughtered illegally.

Ordering him to pay £5,000 costs, Judge Sutcliffe said: "These are serious matters. The regulations are designed to ensure that food that goes into the human food chain presents as little risk as possible and when people disregard these rules they are putting people at risk."

Wahid was ordered to serve 180 hours of a community punishment order. The judge said she was not sending him to prison that because the men who ran the Ilkley farm were "significantly more culpable" and had only received short sentences.

She added: "However, without outlets there would be no point in people like them slaughtering animals illegally, rather like the position with burglars and receivers of property."

The case is understood to have resulted from a wider investigation which led a father and son being jailed for the illegal running of a slaughterhouse which supplied meats across Bradford.

Harrogate magistrates jailed Harold Gray, 62, for four months and his son Michael, 31, for three months. A third man, Sumaullah Patel, 41, who acted as the halal slaughterman, was jailed for two months for carrying out botched sheep killings on the farm.