Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 33
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: ---- the independent farmer. What was her
2 name?
3
4 MS. STEEL: Oh, yes, sorry. I was saying John Bruton, but yes,
5 Vicky Watkins. The conditions that were shown in the video
6 taken by Vicky Watkins where chickens were clearly unable
7 to walk and suffering from leg deformities and other health
8 problems. There is the evidence of Mr. Bruton.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
11
12 MS. STEEL: I will not go into all these right now. There is
13 also the photograph which I took when I went to a Sun
14 Valley unit in 1991 which showed the old style of drinkers
15 and feeders, but on top of that there are also various
16 admissions throughout the evidence of Dr. Patteson of when
17 changes were made to the systems used in the broiler houses
18 and how not all the broiler houses were at the same
19 standard.
20
21 Dr. Patteson said - this was day 90, page 7, line 33 - the
22 number of actual housing units within the company is
23 probably something over 550 and 20 percent of them are
24 company owned. It would be approximately 110 company owned
25 and 440 contractors. And he said that a unit is one
26 broiler shed. He said that there were normally 20 to
27 25,000 broilers in one shed. That would be a modern shed.
28 That was on day 90, page 7, line 51. And then he said that
29 some of the older sheds are smaller and so they do not
30 house so many. (Pause)
31
32 He said that broiler houses were generally stocked with
33 roughly twice as many males to females and with a partition
34 between them, and that the females were taken out for
35 slaughter at 42 days old weighing approximately two
36 kilograms and the males were slaughtered at 52 days
37 weighing approximately three kilograms. The references for
38 that are day 89, page 46, line 11, and day 90, page 20,
39 line 34.
40
41 He said that at 42 days old the males weigh about 2.2
42 kilograms and that in their last 10 days the males put on
43 about 0.7 or 0.8 of a kilo. And he went on to say, so that
44 at 52 days old the stocking density is going to be nearly
45 as much as at 42 days old.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause a moment. (Pause) Yes?
48
49 MS. STEEL: Obviously, I mean, our argument is that the
50 chickens do not have freedom of movement for their entire
51 lives, because they are all stuck in this shed and they
52 cannot get outside, and effectively they have the same
53 space throughout, in terms of how much space they have each
54 throughout their entire lives; it is just that obviously
55 they take up less of it when they are smaller. But
56 particularly for the last few weeks of their lives, they
57 are crammed in in a fashion which is particularly -----
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you mean weeks or days?
60
