The director of a British food supplier that falsely described its products as organic has been jailed for more than two years.

Neil Andrew Stansfield of Newnham in Northamptonshire was one of three members of the staff of One Food Limited to be prosecuted by Northamptonshire County Council trading standards, with the support of the Food Standards Agency.

He received a 27-month sentence in what is believed to be the first custodial sentence for organic food fraud in the UK.

The company is believed to have sold over £500,000 of products wrongly described as organic. The scam came to the attention of Trading Standards in 2007 when it learned that the company had been receiving regular deliveries of what were suspected to be non-organic ingredients.

Test purchases revealed that salmon described as organic by One Food contained synthetic astaxanthin – an additive used in feed for farmed salmon to enhance colour.