A PIG farmer who failed to keep up with his paperwork before and during the foot-and-mouth crisis was hounded out of business after 40 years, his barrister told a court yesterday.

Alan Clement, 58, was fined £580 and ordered to pay £1,129 costs after magistrates at Bishop Auckland, County Durham, found him guilty of 14 charges of failing to keep and failing to produce records of pig movements from his farm near Crook to an abattoir at Witton-le-Wear. He had denied the allegations.

Last year, he and his son, Kenneth, were both penalised after untreated food waste containing meat was found at Craig Lea Farm, near Roddymoor, County Durham.

They had been prosecuted by Durham County Council's consumer department following a ten-week undercover surveillance in 2000.

Mr Clement's barrister, Donald McFaul, mitigating at the end of a two-day trial, said that council and ministry officials had become involved after a neighbour complained to Government Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong, the area's MP, in November 1999.

Mr McFaul said: "He had had pressure hanging over him for a year-and-a-half while he waited for the first prosecution, and a month later it all started up again.

"Mr Clement is out of business after 40 years in farming. He has been hounded out through what started as an old-fashioned neighbour dispute where a disgruntled neighbour knew the right buttons to push.

"He had been in business for 40 years without any problem. Now, his business has been 'killed out', his health is poor, and there has been precious little compensation for farmers."

Chris Baker, prosecuting, said: "The local authority reject any allegations that there has been any hounding on their behalf.

"They were motivated by proper motives and certainly not as a result of pressure put on them by MPs."