Day 125 - 12 May 95 - Page 12
1 single-sided method of cooking.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You mean, when you cook patties on the grill,
4 the temperature of the grill must drop a little as it
5 transfers heat, to the patties?
6 A. That is correct, my Lord.
7
8 Q. Then it will pick up -----
9 A. The technical term is -----
10
11 Q. Patties are taken off. You say, that happens to a lesser
12 degree with the two-sided grill; is that what you are
13 saying?
14 A. Yes, the recoverability characteristic of the two-sided
15 grill is superior to the single-sided cooking method.
16
17 MR. MORRIS: Mike Epsey, former Head of the Department of
18 Agriculture -- is it Epsey or Espey?
19 A. Yes. Mike Espey, yes, he is a former Congressman.
20
21 Q. Am I right, he was Head of the Department of Agriculture?
22 A. That is correct.
23
24 Q. After the Jack-in-the-Box incident, what did he do as a
25 response, in terms of public safety matters?
26 A. I do not know if I am -- if I know all of the various
27 things that he did, but I do know that he expressed the
28 concern of the current administration for some of the
29 practices in the industry, practices regarding fish and
30 foul, fish/foul and other products; and publicly said that
31 some of the techniques and practices were rather antiquated
32 and had suggested that the industry needed to be reviewed
33 and standards needed to be upgraded, as I recall. That is
34 a generalisation of what I recall.
35
36 Q. But in terms of the fast-food industry, is it not a fact
37 that he also was proposing -- I thought it was a regulation
38 or a law, but there was a proposal -- to set a minimum
39 internal temperature for the fast-food industry for burger
40 cooking; is that correct?
41 A. I do not know if that is correct, Mr. Morris. I do not
42 know if that is correct.
43
44 Q. Do you remember he was saying something about internal
45 temperatures?
46 A. He, obviously, was concerned. He expressed concern
47 over the unfortunate death of some of the young people that
48 had visited Jack-in-the-Box. He, as well as everyone else,
49 did not want to see that happen again.
50
51 Q. One of the concerns was the internal temperatures that the
52 burgers were being cooked at, that the burgers reached when
53 they came out of the grill?
54 A. There was a concern, so that if the internal
55 temperature was reached then E.coli 0157 would be killed,
56 and he would not have, you know, he would not have a
57 problem.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There must have been a concern about internal
60 temperatures, in other words, because otherwise the tragedy
