A Battlesbridge fish dealer and his Chelmsford employee have pleaded guilty to carp smuggling after the largest ever seizure of illegally imported live fish.

Mark Dallas, of Premier Fish Supplies, Battlesbridge, and Lee Coles, of Chelmsford, faced Folkestone magistrates to answer charges of smuggling 1.8 tonnes of fish into the UK through the Channel Tunnel from Belgium in April 2002.

It was the latest in a series of successful operations by fish health inspectors. Tests identified a fatal virus, spring viraemia of carp (SVC), previously found in Moldova, potentially dangerous to native fish in samples taken from the consignment of 262 large carp.

The court heard that if the fish had been introduced to our waters, there could have been disastrous consequences for wild and commercial fish species.

Magistrates told the two men that the offences were so serious that they considered their powers to sentence insufficient. They committed Dallas, who has three previous convictions for fish smuggling, and Coles for sentence to Maidstone Crown Court.

Acting on intelligence, inspectors from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), based at Weymouth, stopped Dallas's lorry, suspecting that the fish did not have a movement document/health certificate attesting that they were healthy and free from disease.

Dallas paid £3,000 for half the haul, and possibly the same amount for the remainder, making him a £79,000 profit.

The diseased fish were subsequently humanely destroyed by CEFAS inspectors.

CEFAS investigations inspector Stephen Maidment said: "We discovered that a fatal virus was present in the smuggled fish, capable of wiping out up to 90 per cent of indigenous fish in a UK lake."

Published Thursday, January 16, 2003

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