Day 096 - 03 Mar 95 - Page 58


     
     1        A.  I cannot be held to time on that.  I know that is a
     2        system that was tried and did not work very well.
     3
     4   Q.   Your company did not have any policy about those cages
     5        particularly, I do not mean in your own place but in
     6        general in terms of suppliers you have just got the normal
     7        conditions in the industry?
     8        A.  In the 70 and 80s, but definitely now in the last 10
     9        years we have had a policy not to have anything to do with
    10        those.
    11
    12   Q.   So your suppliers would have had to start phasing them out
    13        somewhere in the middle 80s?
    14        A.  It was not our wish to keep pigs like that, yes.
    15
    16   Q.   Any longer?
    17        A.  Yes.
    18
    19   MS. STEEL:  Carry on.
    20
    21                   (The video recording continued).
    22
    23   MS. STEEL:  Can we pause?  Does your company use -- well has it
    24        used medication in the feed?
    25        A.  Yes, I said earlier that we used medication such as
    26        penicillin, etc., for various problems that might arise.
    27
    28   Q.   For background infections?
    29        A.  When one talks about background infection, we will on
    30        our veterinarian visit if they think that there is a
    31        preventative necessity, it will be used at times.  There
    32        are times when you can have an outbreak of a problem in a
    33        piggery and you might consider it necessary to use
    34        preventative medicine in the next piggery on one of our
    35        units.  It is a question -- I will try to give a simple
    36        example of flu flying about.
    37
    38   MS. STEEL:   Just carry on.
    39
    40                   (The video recording continued).
    41
    42   MR. MORRIS:  Could you stop it there, please?  The growth
    43        promoting drugs they were talking, including antibiotics
    44        and other ones, are they the ones that you would use?
    45        Would they all be from this prescribed list the other
    46        farmers was talking about?
    47        A.  We will not use any drug promoting antibiotics
    48        whatsoever.  That is written in our specification.  That is
    49        written in the Freedom Food RSPCA specification.  It is
    50        written in our retailer specification.  Growth promoters we 
    51        do not use. 
    52 
    53   MS. STEEL:  Is that something that has come in with the Freedom
    54        Food system?
    55        A.  No, no, no.  It is a European -- clenbeuterol is banned
    56        in Europe and we as a company chose to take that route with
    57        our pigs as well in having no growth promoters.
    58
    59   Q.   When was that banned then?  You banned them at the same
    60        time as it became a European -----

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