Appeals court reduces fake Maltese honey merchant's sentence

Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, presiding over the Court of Criminal Appeal, has partially overturned a judgment by the Court of Magistrates in Gozo, which had imposed a suspended sentence on a man guilty of offences under the Food Safety Act.

In April 2014, Simon Kris Enriquez, from San Lawrenz, Gozo had filed an appeal from a suspended sentence handed to him in 2011 after he was found guilty of mislabelling Sicilian honey as originating from Malta.

In 2011, the Department of Agriculture had received complaints regarding honey that had been falsely labelled as originating from Malta. Inspectors had gone to Enriquez’s house in San Lawrenz, finding a packaging operation setup, together with buckets full of oil which was being distributed in bottles labelled “Gozo Specialities”, the name of Enriquez’s business, which he ran together with his brother Jamie.

The inspectors had also seized a bucket containing honey, however a court appointed expert had conducted a chemical analysis and established that the honey did not originate from Malta.

In his appeal, Enriquez had repeated his denial of having sold mislabelled honey and argued that the samples had not been taken using the correct legal or accounting procedure, also saying that none of the inspectors had advised him of his right to request a sample for independent testing.

He said that there was no guarantee that the sample was not contaminated in some way and that this was compounded by the fact that it had been taken from an open bucket and not from one of the sealed containers which were on sale.

The Court of Appeal agreed with this argument insofar as the samples taken from the bucket were concerned, noting that the procedure used in taking these samples and their subsequent analysis was not in conformity with Food Safety Act. 

The judge noted that while the inspections had been carried out by officials from the Department of Agriculture, no evidence had been presented to satisfy the court that the officials were adequately qualified under the Food Safety Act. He also questioned how closely the regulations specified in the act had been followed by the inspectors.

But the court did not find reason to disturb the judgment of the first court with respect to the tests carried out on the other samples, which had been recovered from sealed jars in the house.

With regard to the mislabelling of the produce as originating from Gozo, the court pointed out that the accused himself had testified that the company “Gozo specialities” was registered to him and upheld the judgment of the previous court in this regard.

The court overturned Enriquez's conviction for attaching a false commercial description to the produce, manufacturing or selling honey with an excessive level of diastase and an amount of glucose and fructose below the required minimum, selling a food product that was not up to standard and misleading consumers as to the source of pre-packed goods, reducing his sentence to four months, suspended for a year.