Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 48


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you know of Bristol Food Laboratories?
     3        A.  No, I do not.  I phoned them after I saw these
     4        results.  I phoned the laboratories to find out what type
     5        of agar they used, what kind of incubation methods they
     6        used, because it is easier to interpret the results.  That
     7        is why I have often preferred to do TVC counts myself,
     8        because then I know exactly how they have been done and
     9        what has been done, but I have had no other contact with
    10        them.
    11
    12   MR. MORRIS:  So, looking through these documents to save time,
    13        just flicking through them, what do they tell you, bearing
    14        in mind the limitations of the spacing between the tests?
    15        A.  Well, the only results that I would really be
    16        interested in or that, perhaps, would be of some indication
    17        are the ones from the boning halls.  The ones from the
    18        chillers, I assume that these are the carcass chillers
    19        because I cannot remember the room numbers of the carcass
    20        chillers, but I assume chiller 10341 is a carcass chiller.
    21
    22        Those results are fairly useless since -- usually, when
    23        carcass swabs are made, they are done at five different
    24        sites on each carcass half to be of any help as
    25        interpreting the results.  The contamination levels and the
    26        bacterial levels on a carcass, they vary enormously
    27        depending on where exactly, what swatch you take your swab
    28        from.  A single swab from one spot on a carcass is not very
    29        helpful, but the boning hall results, they are surface
    30        swabs.  They obviously, you are there talking about, as far
    31        as trimtable, cutting block, and band saw table are
    32        concerned, of surfaces where the meat actually touches the
    33        surface.  You would obviously want those surfaces to be
    34        extremely clean.  You would accept higher counts on a wall,
    35        perhaps, because you would assume that the meat does not
    36        touch the wall or you would hope, at least, it does not.
    37
    38        You would mainly be concerned about the surface where the
    39        meat, bare meat, touches the tables.  These results here,
    40        they are very high counts.  Counts in category E would
    41        definitely prompt me into action.  I would definitely
    42        personally see the cleaning manager and would most likely
    43        be present myself when they did the cleaning next time.
    44
    45        If I saw this sort of count on a newly cleaned surface in a
    46        place where the cleaning procedures include use of
    47        disinfectants, I would be highly concerned because I would
    48        not think that the cleaning was done in the way it should
    49        be done.
    50 
    51        At Jarretts I would partly attribute these high counts to 
    52        the fact that there is no drying time, and that the 
    53        cleaning times are very short, so obviously the cleaning
    54        personnel are pushed, and to the fact that a lot of these
    55        tables, trimtables and cutting blocks, they were as
    56        I mentioned of this -- I have no idea when they say
    57        "trimtable" whether they have swabbed the stainless table
    58        on which usually the cutting slab made of this white
    59        polyvinyl material rests.  I do not know whether they have
    60        actually swabbed the block or the trimtable itself, but

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