Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 26
1
2 (Short Adjournment)
3
4 MR. MORRIS: Just on the last point I made about chicken being
5 cooked at 70 degrees for two minutes, I have checked on the
6 figures for that, so it may well be that McDonald's
7 specifications are above that, but if chicken is
8 undercooked obviously there is a problem. That will be
9 accepted by everybody, I should think.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have the preliminary view that the most
12 important aspect is what goes on in the restaurants. If
13 the leaflet means what the Plaintiffs say it does, the most
14 important issues are what goes on in the restaurants
15 because there is quite a lot of common ground as to what
16 the situation is until then. I know there was an awful lot
17 of issue about the load of micro-organisms and the
18 microbiological testing, but there was not actually a lot
19 of difference there at the end of the day. It turned out
20 that most of the organisms were ones which related to
21 deterioration of the meat, but oddly enough they were
22 rather stronger than the ones which affected human beings
23 and the more there were of them the more they knocked the
24 others on the head.
25
26 But there are certain potentially dangerous organisms which
27 I may decide by and large are not tested for because they
28 are nearly always there, or are not tested for in a way
29 which is likely to find them so as to stop the meat there
30 and then. But the one thing which is common ground is that
31 to be safe it has got to be properly cooked. What it may
32 be I have got to look at, is there evidence that it is not
33 properly cooked? Obviously, on occasions it is not
34 properly cooked, but is there evidence that it is not
35 properly cooked to a state where there is a real risk of
36 food poisoning, if the Plaintiffs' construction of the
37 leaflet is correct.
38
39 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I mean, I think that despite the Plaintiffs'
40 attempt to challenge the pre-store contamination in the
41 live animal, in the slaughter house, in production, et
42 cetera, it is largely conceded that the food products
43 through that process - and we are talking here about
44 particularly beef and chicken, minced meat and chicken are
45 the ones that are identified in the leaflet that are
46 particularly identified although the growth promoting
47 hormone drugs, pesticide residues and antibiotics used
48 relate to animals in general, according to the leaflet.
49
50 But I think that it is demonstrated without any real
51 challenge whatsoever that the products carry a risk when
52 they arrive in the store, and that really should be the end
53 of it but on top of showing that there is a risk we are
54 able to demonstrate that that risk is a fragile - that the
55 system set up to deal with it, having failed all the way
56 along the line, effectively, to prevent that risk, then in
57 the cooking process are so fragile and flawed, not by
58 oversight, although in some cases it can be by oversight,
59 but also because of the McDonald's employment conditions,
60 the system that they set up, the pressure, the young,
