Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 35


     
     1   MS. STEEL:   Um.
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Your point is the same, whichever figure it
     4        is.  Quite frankly let us not spend time, you have raised
     5        both figures, I don't think it is worth-----
     6
     7   MS. STEEL:   The only reason I said that was just coming back to
     8        it after all this time...
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   It is important, because one has to remember
    11        the words in the actual leaflet - 'frequently result in
    12        animals having their throats cut while still fully
    13        conscious'.  So it is important that one notes that
    14        incident.
    15
    16   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
    17
    18   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Whatever one says about brain stem and that,
    19        things of that kind.
    20
    21   MS. STEEL:   One percent of the birds were decapitated without
    22        being stunned and obviously if they had not been stunned
    23        then they are having their throats cut whilst they are
    24        still fully conscious, and one percent of birds is around
    25        1,500 birds a day.  I would say that that is frequent.
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you have a reference for that?
    28
    29   MS. STEEL:   The one percent of birds?
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  (Pause).
    32
    33   MS. STEEL:   Yes.  Well, it is in his statement.  I would have
    34        to find it from the transcript.  It is the bit I was just
    35        reading a moment ago: "One percent of the birds were
    36        thought to have missed the water of the water bath stunner
    37        and hence were not stunned.  These birds also missed the
    38        automatic cutter because their necks were not extended and
    39        instead...."
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes.  So his evidence was that if a bird
    42        missed the water, it would normally miss the automatic neck
    43        cutter; so a man or woman does the cutting manually with a
    44        knife.  I have that in my notes immediately after "some
    45        birds actually miss the water in the stun bath
    46        completely".  Dr. Gregory examined 200 birds, and
    47        I understood him to say that one percent, that is two
    48        birds, missed the water, but this was on an occasion other
    49        than 19th April 1993.  Then he went on to say that if the
    50        bird missed the water, it would normally miss the automatic 
    51        neck cutter; presumably, because it is not hanging there, 
    52        effectively it might be said, deadweight;  so a man or 
    53        woman does the cutting manually with a knife.  Normally,
    54        this would be a cut across the neck to bleed it out, but at
    55        Sun Valley they were cutting off the whole head.  Some
    56        scientific research raises doubt about whether there is
    57        instantaneous unconsciousness in a decapitated chicken.
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:   At the rates that Dr. Pattison told us the birds
    60        were being slaughtered per day, 170,000 birds, that would

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