The Gangmasters Licensing Authority revoked the licence of D J Houghton Catching Services Limited on Tuesday (30th October), as a man aged 52 and a 50 year-old woman were arrested in Maidstone in a joint operation with Kent police.

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The Maidstone-based firm used gangs of workers to catch chickens at farms across the UK. However, a 'multi-agency investigation' revealed the workers had been made to live in squalid conditions and threatened with violence. The GLA said the level of "exploitation [was] so extreme that the Authority had to order the firm to stop supplying workers to farms and food factories immediately."

The 32 workers, the majority of whom were Lithuanian, were said to have lived "in a climate of fear." They had been charged excessive job finding fees, had had their pay stopped for the most spurious reasons, were kept in debt bondage and had to work without proper health and safety equipment for shifts lasting up to 17 hours, the investigators found.

Following the operation, Neil Court of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority commented, "This is one of the worse cases of exploitation the GLA has ever uncovered in the food supply chain. The GLA remains committed to tackling the worst offenders, ensuring that those companies and individuals that are intent on exploiting workers are prevented from holding a GLA licence, or have their licence revoked."

The two arrests were made in connection to human trafficking offences. Kent Police said enquiries into the matter are ongoing. A spokesperson for the force said, "Kent Police will support the GLA’s role to control any company which fails to comply with the licensing legislation, which was set up to protect the rights of workers. Such failures can and do lead to exploitation. Jointly we will seek to prevent and prosecute any identified exploitation, whether through civil regulation or criminal investigation."

D J Houghton had been a certified member of the RSPCA's Freedom Foods Assurance Scheme. Freedom Foods, despite having fared relatively well in recent assessments of the UK's animal welfare labelling schemes, has been under increased scrutiny since April, when undercover reporters documented serious cases of abuse at a certified pig farm in Norfolk. A GLA spokesperson said that, due to the number of infractions and their nature, D J Houghton's "continued operation would have been totally unacceptable."

The RSPCA said it is the scheme member’s responsibility to check their labour providers and ensure they live up to Freedom Foods’ standards.  in a statement following the week’s events in Kent, "In line with the scheme rules, DJ Houghton Catching Services have been suspended from the scheme as of October 30th 2012. Should these shocking allegations regarding workers at the site prove to be true, then the business’s membership of Freedom Food will be withdrawn."

The NFU reiterated that farmers using gang labour have a responsibility for the welfare of these workers and, if they turn a blind eye to exploitative practices risk being seen as complicit in the eyes of the law. Subsequent investigations have shown the workers were employed on farms supplying supermarkets Tesco, Adsa, Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's, as well as McDonald’s .

Ian Livsey, chief executive of the Gangmaster Licensing Authority said, "We are determined to drive out those ruthless people who abuse and exploit vulnerable workers. Working with our partner agencies, we have cracked down on potential exploitation in the food supply chain. There is no hiding place for those who exploit the vulnerable, and neither we nor our partner law enforcement agencies will tolerate abuse of the vulnerable worker."

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