What would breach article 21(3) of The Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996?

Being served with a notice under the Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996 and doing nothing by the date it specifies. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Power to give directions

Q: Is article 21(3) of The Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996 a strict liability offence?

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.

article 21(3) of The Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996

Status not determined
Strict liability
Food, consumer protection, trading standards, product safety and age-restricted sales

This offence was read from the text as made, and no revised version was available, so a later revocation could not be ruled out. Check the current text at legislation.gov.uk.

What the provision says

3 Any person failing to comply with any direction given under this Order shall be guilty of an offence under the Animal Health Act 1981.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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: failing to comply with a notice or direction
Fault element: Strict liability
Burden of proof: No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything

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 states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.

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

What would breach article 21(3)?

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.

Being served with a notice under the Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial: Not determined
Maximum fine: Not determined
Maximum prison (summary): Not determined

no penalty is stated in this instrument; it may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence.

No penalty was determined from this instrument. It may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence. Absence of a figure here is not evidence that the offence carries no penalty.

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.

Sentencing organisations: fines and the means of a corporate defendant All courts in England and Wales
How a fine on a company is arrived at from its turnover. Relevant far beyond the guidelines that state it, because a very large share of the offences in this corpus can only be committed by an organisation.
Health and safety offences, corporate manslaughter and food safety and hygiene offences: definitive guideline Magistrates' courts and the Crown Court in England and Wales · in force from 1 February 2016
Covers breaches of duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the regulations made under it, and food safety and food hygiene offences. Sentencing turns on culpability and on the seriousness and likelihood of harm risked, not only on the harm that happened.
Reduction in sentence for a guilty plea: definitive guideline All courts in England and Wales · in force from 1 June 2017
The sliding scale of credit for pleading guilty, from one third at the first stage of proceedings downwards.
General guideline: overarching principles All courts in England and Wales · in force from 1 October 2019
The guideline a court uses when there is no offence-specific guideline, which is the position for the overwhelming majority of offences created by statutory instrument. It sets out how culpability and harm are assessed from first principles.
Totality: definitive guideline All courts in England and Wales
How to sentence more than one offence at once so that the total is just and proportionate - frequently in point here, because regulatory prosecutions commonly charge several breaches of the same instrument.

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: Status not determined
Made: 24 July 1996
In force from: 26 July 1996
Extent: Not stated

How this was established: read from the text as made; no revised version available, so later revocation could not be ruled out.

What the instrument is for

This Order revokes and re-makes with amendments the Specified Bovine Material (No. 2) Order 1996. It controls specified bovine material, being material which may contain the agent containing bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It implements in part— a Commission Decision 94/474/EC (OJ No. L194, 29.7.94, p.96) concerning certain protection measures relating to bovine spongiform encephalopathy and repealing Decisions 89/469/EEC and 90/200/EEC; and b the provisions relating to animal waste of Council Directive 90/667/EEC (OJ No. L363, 27.12.90, p. 51) laying down the veterinary rules for the disposal of animal waste, for its placing on the market and for the prevention of pathogens in feeding stuffs of animal or fish origin and amending Directive 90/425/EEC as read with Commission Decision 92/562/EEC (OJ No. L359, 9.12.92, p. 23) and Commission Decision 94/382/EC (OJ No. L172, 7.7.94, p. 25) which was amended by Commission Decision 95/29/EC (OJ No. L38, 18.2.95, p. 17). It controls the sale and use of specified bovine material for human and animal consumption (articles 4 and 7) and the production of mechanically recovered meat (articles 5 and 6). It regulates the initial treatment of specified bovine material (articles 8, 9 and 11) and the rendering of whole carcases. It prohibits the removal of the brain, eyes and spinal cord from a bovine animal (articles 12 and 13) and it regulates the importation of specified bovine material from Northern Ireland (article 14). The Order regulates the consignment of specified bovine material once it has been removed from the carcase (article 15) and requires the approval of collection centres, incinerators, rendering plants and other premises that process specified bovine material (articles 16 to 19). It contains provisions on veterinary and laboratory premises, directions, export, sampling, transport, storage and enforcement (article 20 to 26). The amendments made by this Order— a extend the Order to solid matter trapped in drainage systems where bovine animals are slaughtered or their carcases processed (article 2(1)); b exempt the feeding of animals for research purposes in certain circumstances from the prohibition on feeding specified bovine material to animals (article 7(6)); and c require slaughterhouses to arrange a staff training programme to train their staff to comply with the relevant requirements of the Order (article 8(9)). A Compliance Cost Assessment for this Order has been prepared and placed in the library of each House of Parliament. Copies can be obtained from the Animal Health (Disease Control) Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Government Buildings, Hook Rise South, Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 7NF.

Read the full note and every offence in this 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”
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

This provision on legislation.gov.uk The authoritative text. Check it before relying on anything here.
The Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996 Every offence this instrument creates, and its explanatory note
Food, consumer protection, trading standards, product safety and age-restricted salesOther offences on the same subject
Offences created in 1996