Filthy chicken factory used Y-fronts as cleaning rags

A man has admitted supplying chicken to takeaways from a filthy, unlicensed backstreet processing plant. Kamran Ajaib used Y-fronts as cleaning rags and had no wash handbasins or knife steriliser in his makeshift butchers in Maggs Lane, Fishponds, Bristol, which produced 20 tonnes of meat a week.



The chicken went to takeaway restaurants and kebab shops in Bristol, as well as surrounding towns and cities as far afield as Swindon, Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. But the premises had none of the necessary food hygiene approvals or licences to work with meat. Council officers raided the site on the Fishponds Trading Estate after a customer found a piece of metal wire in a takeaway chicken.

Accompanied by police, they found work tables, a bandsaw – a type of saw often used to cut meat – knives, a chainmail glove – used by butchers to prevent accidental cuts to their hands while chopping meat – and open wheelie bins containing meat debris and bones. The court was shown a photograph of a box of meat with a pair of underpants draped over it. It was said that the pants were clean and came from a next door business, which had a surplus of old stock, and had been used as cleaning cloths at the chicken plant.



Bristol City Council successfully applied for an order from magistrates to destroy more than four tonnes of chicken seized in a raid on the unit in May last year. At Bristol Crown Court, Ajaib, of Gordon Road, Whitehall, pleaded guilty to 16 charges of failing to comply with food hygiene regulations, between June 2010 and May last year. He faces a possible jail sentence when he returns to the court next month.