UK Offence Report

Offences and penalties

regulation 11(1) of The Poultry Meat (Water Content) Regulations 1984

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

1 Any person who contravenes or fails to comply with regulation

5 of these regulations or any Community provision specified in paragraph (2) of this regulation shall be guilty of an offence and subject to paragraph (4) of this regulation shall be liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding £2000.

Text as made, from legislation.gov.uk. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.

Who it binds, and what has to be proved

Binds
a person
Conduct
contravening a requirement of the instrument
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
Legal burden on the defendant

The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened. This is a strict liability offence as drafted: the provision uses no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence, so there is no need to show that a person meant to do it, knew about it, or was careless.

Intention, knowledge and carelessness are irrelevant to guilt. They may still matter a great deal to sentence.

The provision gives a defence the defendant must prove, on the balance of probabilities. A legal burden of that kind can be read down to a merely evidential one under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 where placing it on the defendant would be disproportionate (R v Lambert [2001] UKHL 37; Sheldrake v DPP [2004] UKHL 43).

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision.

The defence, as drafted

1 In any proceedings for an offence under these regulations it shall be a defence for the defendant to prove that he took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence. 2 If in any case the defence provided by paragraph (1) of this regulation involves the allegation that the commission of the offence was due to the

What would breach regulation 11(1)?

These are illustrations, not law. They are generated from the provision’s own words to show the shape of the offence. Whether any particular conduct is caught depends on the full text, on any amendment since, and on the facts.

  1. On these words an offence is committed where a person contravenes or fails to comply with regulation 5 of these regulations or any Community provision specified in paragraph (2) of this regulation.
  2. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Poultry Meat (Water Content) Regulations 1984, whatever the reason for doing it.
  3. Where the requirement is a positive duty, letting the time for performing it pass without performing it.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£2,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

Sentencing

Offences of this kind are usually sentenced under the guidelines below. This is a mapping by subject, not a finding about this provision, and the links go to a search of the Sentencing Council’s own site.

Prosecution figures

No published per-offence figure was found for this provision, and it could not be matched to a Ministry of Justice offence code. Offences created by statutory instrument very largely do not have one. Absence of a figure is not evidence that the offence is unused.

Status and lifecycle

Current status
Revoked
Revoked by
The Poultrymeat (Wales) Regulations 2011
Revoked on
15 August 2011
Made
30 July 1984
In force from
1 September 1984
Extent
E+W

How this was established: the instrument was revoked by a later instrument found in this corpus.

What the instrument is for

(This note is not part of the Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These regulations which come into operation on 1st September 1984 (regulation 1) supersede the Poultry Meat (Water Content) Regulations 1982 and supplement the provisions of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2967/76, laying down common standards for the water content of frozen and deep-frozen chickens, hens and cocks, and Commission Regulation (EEC) No 2785/80, introducing detailed rules for implementing Regulation (EEC) No 2967/76. In addition the regulations implement in part article 5 of Council Directive No 83/643/EEC on the facilitation of physical inspections and administrative formalities in respect of carriage of goods between Member States. The regulations, which provide for the enforcement of articles 1 and 2 of the Council Regulation and of articles 2 and 4 of the Commission Regulation— designate the authorities which are to enforce the Community Regulations (regulation 3); specify the powers of authorised officers of enforcement authorities (regulation 4); require poultry carcases to be marked so as to identify the slaughterhouse from which they originate (regulation 5); allow importers to require the inspection of imported poultry carcases out of business hours and enforcement authorities to make reasonable charges for providing such services (regulation 6); require a notice of intended prosecution to be served on proposed defendants in certain cases (regulation 7); prescribe procedures for analysis and counter-analysis (regulations 8 and 9); specify the method of analysis and counter-analysis (regulation 10); prescribe offences and penalties (regulation 11); require enforcement authorities to provide the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with such information as he may require (regulation 12); and make ancillary provisions (regulations 13–17). These regulations apply to England and Wales only.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

Other offences in the same instrument

How this was identified as an offence

Everything above rests on the judgement that this provision creates a criminal offence, rather than mentioning one. That judgement is made by rule, from the words of the provision, and this is the rule that made it — with a confidence of 0.92.

Basis
the provision says a person is “guilty of an offence”; the provision states liability on summary conviction; the provision states a penalty in older drafting
Confidence
0.92 of 1.00

A provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere can read very like one that creates an offence, and the rules can mistake the one for the other. If the text quoted above sets a penalty for something made an offence by another provision, treat the classification on this page with that in mind, and read the instrument.

Check the source