UK Offence Report

Enforcement of the Council Regulation

regulation 2(2) of The Beef Labelling (Enforcement) Regulations 1998

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

2 Where beef has been labelled and marketed in a manner which does not comply with a specification established under Article 14 or 15 of the Council Regulation, an officer of a food authority enforcing these Regulations may serve a notice on the person in possession of the beef requiring its removal from sale until the label is removed or until the beef is relabelled in accordance with those Articles; and any person who fails to comply with the provisions of that notice shall be guilty of an offence.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 regulation 2(2)?

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 fails to comply with the provisions of that notice.
  2. Being served with a notice under the Beef Labelling (Enforcement) Regulations 1998 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
  3. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
  4. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Standard scale
Level 5
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

this is the level 5 value when the instrument came into force (1998-04-01); the standard scale is keyed to the date the offence was committed, and for conduct today the same words mean an unlimited fine.

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 Beef Labelling (Enforcement) (Wales) Regulations 2001
Revoked on
1 April 2001
Made
9 March 1998
In force from
1 April 1998
Extent
Not stated

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 provide for the enforcement in Great Britain of Title II of Council Regulation (EC) No. 820/97 (establishing a system for the identification and registration of bovine animals and regarding the labelling of beef and beef products) and Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1141/97 (laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No. 820/97 as regards the labelling of beef and beef products). A breach of Article 12.1 of the Council Regulation or Articles 2 or 3 of the Commission Regulation is an offence against the Food Safety Act 1990 punishable by a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, as is failure to comply with a notice to remove mislabelled beef from sale (regulation 2). Failure to have in place a proper identification system under Article 2 of the Commission Regulation is an offence, as is failure to grant to the independent body employed to verify labelling claims access to premises, and failure to communicate relevant information to the competent authority (regulation 3). The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is the competent authority for the purposes of both the Council Regulation and the Commission Regulation. The Regulations appoint food authorities to enforce them (regulation 4). A Regulatory Appraisal has been prepared and placed in the library of each House of Parliament. Copies can be obtained from the Beef and Sheep Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Whitehall Place (West Block), London SW1A 2HH.

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”
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