Day 077 - 25 Jan 95 - Page 52


     
     1        "visual hygiene", that is to say, hygiene of the people,
     2        the services, the machinery and so on, instruments used,
     3        and food safety for humans?
     4        A.  Yes, there is a correlation, there is bound to be.
     5        What you are attempting to do is to ensure that the plant
     6        is cleaned.  What is most important in that is that it
     7        gives all your operating staff the right attitude.  It
     8        follows that if it is physically clean in appearance, then
     9        I mean, it is clean in other ways as well.  What Mr. North
    10        does not know is that the first job in the morning of the
    11        laboratory is to go round and swab with bacteriology swabs
    12        and take contact plates to ensure that the eight hours
    13        cleaning has been carried out efficiently and the plant is
    14        sterile.
    15
    16   Q.   Presumably, those are legal requirements enforced on you,
    17        are they not?
    18        A.  No, sir.  They are not legal requirements; they are
    19        good customer practice requirements.
    20
    21   Q.   Can you read the last sense of what he writes here?
    22        A.  I have read it, sir.
    23
    24   Q.   Can I ask you if you understand what it means?
    25        A.  No, I do not.  I mean, to say that there is "an inverse
    26        correlation between high visual standards and
    27        microbiological standard", my experience of food plants in
    28        several countries in the world, the cleanest ones are the
    29        best ones because they pay attention to detail.
    30
    31   Q.   Can you turn then, please, to paragraph 18?  14 to 17,
    32        I think, are all about poultry which does not concern
    33        you.  We come back to the manufacture of hamburgers in
    34        paragraph 18 where he says -- I had better read the last
    35        paragraph of 17 -- "In this sense, it is fair to say that
    36        the McDonald's operation, taken as a whole, is
    37        intrinsically unhygienic - despite the emphasis on
    38        wholesome appearance and allied attributes.
    39
    40        The same must be said of the beef burger operation.  At the
    41        slaughterhouse, there is great emphasis on keeping
    42        individual animals apart to avoid cross-contamination and
    43        the transfer of invisible micro organisms.  The subsequent
    44        bulking of large quantities of meat, cut from a large
    45        number of individual animals, can do nothing other than
    46        encourage the spread of contamination."  What comment, if
    47        any, do you have to make about that proposition,
    48        Mr. Walker?
    49        A.  Well, for a start what is "large"?  I mean, I have seen
    50        plants in the United States of America where much larger 
    51        quantities of meat than what is handled in the United 
    52        Kingdom, and I think that coming back to what we were 
    53        saying a moment ago, if the machinery is cleaned down and
    54        the machinery is sterilized, I do not see that what he says
    55        is logical.
    56
    57   Q.   Suppose that you have -- can we use a visual aid for a
    58        moment -- two pieces of meat which we will call "A" and
    59        "B"; "A" is the pink one and "B" is the yellow one.
    60        Somewhere along the line this piece, the pink one, piece

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