Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 29


     
     1        If, in fact, they have a hundred thousand pigs turned over
     2        twice a year or thereabouts, that makes 200,000.  The
     3        300,000 which you have just quoted from other farmers would
     4        be 60 percent of the half million pigs a year, as it
     5        happens.
     6
     7        So at the moment it looks to me as if the bottom line is
     8        about half a million pigs a year and 200,000 come off their
     9        own farms.  That is approximately two by 100,000.  And in
    10        'own farms' I include contract system as well as own
    11        land.  And 300,000 come from this 80 to 100 other
    12        suppliers.
    13
    14        It may not matter at the end of the day, but I say that so
    15        that if at some stage you turn up evidence which you think
    16        means that that inference is wrong, you can tell me about
    17        it.
    18
    19   MS. STEEL:   I am trying to get my head round it, actually.
    20
    21   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you understand what I have said to you?
    22        You started off by saying that about 60 percent of the pigs
    23        which went through the Bowes processing were other farms,
    24        60 percent production from other producers.
    25
    26   MS. STEEL:   Yes, right.  I see, yes, okay.
    27
    28   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  300,000 is 60 percent of half a million.  The
    29        balance of the half million being the 100,000 pigs of their
    30        own which are turned over twice a year, about 40,000 on
    31        their own land, farmed by their own people, and the balance
    32        on these contract farmers to whom they take the pigs and
    33        from whom they collect them in due course; and being their
    34        own pigs, I assume, but you may say there is evidence which
    35        shows it is wrong, that they are taken there when weaned
    36        and they are fattened by these contract farmers.
    37
    38   MS. STEEL:   I do not think that is right, actually.
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do not get taken up by it now, because with
    41        the number of days of transcript we have got, one could sit
    42        down and spend twenty-five minutes looking for it and still
    43        not have found it.
    44
    45        But if Bowes supply the pigs for this 50 or 55,000, or
    46        maybe it is as many as 60,000, if there are 100,000, and
    47        the other farms the labour, it seems to me the natural
    48        inference is that they are taking them there at three and a
    49        half weeks of age.
    50 
    51   MS. STEEL:   That is true, that would be the inference, yes. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The ones which are coming from Yorkshire, for
    54        instance, which he spoke about, are probably ones from the
    55        80 or 100 other suppliers, and knowing the sort of area he
    56        operates in, I should think all the contract suppliers, or
    57        nearly all of them, are within a certain area.  He did give
    58        some evidence about that.
    59
    60   MS. STEEL:   Yes, he said 98 percent of the supplies would be

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