A MUSLIM smallholder and the first person in the Bromley borough to be punished for the illegal religious slaughter of sheep has denied he intentionally did anything wrong.

Zeki Ismail’s small farm in Keston was raided last December after he splashed out £360 on six sheep at a market in Ashford, Kent.

Bromley Council’s food safety officers, meat hygiene vets and animal health inspectors all feared Mr Ismail might kill the livestock for Halal meat without following safety rules.

By the time they arrived at the farm with police, three sheep had already been killed and the meat shared around the family.

But Mr Ismail argues he was completely unaware he was breaking strict farming laws.

The bemused 39-year-old said: “I think they were expecting a blood bath but they found nothing like that.

“We moved here as a family to be more self-sufficient and to live a cleaner, more wholesome lifestyle.

“I made a mistake killing the sheep the way I did but I am not an experienced farmer.”

Mr Ismail slit the throats of his sheep without stunning them first - breaking a UK law which states animals which are not stunned must only be killed at a licensed slaughterhouse.

Chickens and rabbits

Local authorities were tipped off by suspicious Kent County Council trading standards officers who had spotted the married father-of-four buying the unsually small number of sheep at the market.

Business and IT consultant Mr Ismail, who also has chickens and rabbits on his farm in Leaves Green Road, said: “I made a number of mistakes but I’m trying to make a better life for my family.

“We treated the animals properly and I thought it was the most humane way to kill the sheep.”

Mr Ismail admitted failing to stun the sheep before killing them, religiously slaughtering the animals outside of a slaughterhouse, supplying food containing specified risk material for human consumption, and failing to tell the local authority that six sheep had moved onto his smallholding.

He was fined £3,000 and told to pay £3,799 costs at Bromley Magistrates' Court on July 22.

The council’s food safety manager Paul Lehane said: “We fully respect the right to undertake religious slaughter in accordance with the law.”

Mr Ismail says he was putting the animals' welfare first when he killed his sheep - as stated in Islamic law.

London’s Halal Food Authority says animals have to be fed as normal and given water prior to slaughter and one animal must not see the other being killed. The authority also says the “knife should be four times the size of the neck and razor sharp, and as far as possible the slaughterer and the animal should face Qibla or Mecca.”

The organisation does not ban animals from being stunned before their throats are slit, but the UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee states slaughter must take place without stunning the animals.