Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 48
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
