Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 51


     
     1   MR. MORRIS:  You have seen these documents, have you?
     2        A.  Yes.
     3
     4   Q.   When you flick through them, do you have any conclusions
     5        regarding whether they have got better or worse or whether
     6        they can show you anything?
     7        A.  Well, as I said earlier, I would disregard, I would not
     8        even want to comment on any of the other swabs than the
     9        ones that were taken in the boning hall or, basically, the
    10        surface swabs taken anywhere.  They are obviously very poor
    11        and I do not see any improvement happening over these
    12        months, that the results are available for us.
    13
    14   Q.   Bearing in mind the limitations that you have expressed
    15        about these kinds of tests, what kind of levels of TVC
    16        would concern you if it was in a product, a finished
    17        product?
    18        A.  Of a meat product?
    19
    20   Q.   Yes.
    21        A.  Basically, I must say that I would not want to comment
    22        on that.  I have no speciality in food hygiene.  As a
    23        general, I work with fresh meat and abattoirs.  Basically,
    24        there are no fixed TVC counts on fresh meat either.  There
    25        have been several attempts in the history of public health
    26        to set these sort of guidelines.  As far as I can remember,
    27        the only country where there has been statutory
    28        requirements for the bacterial counts in fresh meat is
    29        United States in the 1970s.  Some States there had
    30        5,000,000 as a limit for legal sale of meat.
    31
    32        But those regulations were obviously abolished on the basis
    33        of the same as we now do not want -- no scientist even
    34        wants to set any limits because total viable counts, as
    35        I said, are very poor aids.  They can only do one thing and
    36        even that thing they can do it poorly.  So, they cannot
    37        tell us anything about the safety of the meat.  So, you can
    38        have total viable count of 100 in a sample of meat and that
    39        piece of meat can be dangerous to eat.  So, to set a limit
    40        up to 5,000,000, a legal limit, and then the of the meat
    41        could say:  "Well, this is legal meat, total viable count
    42        is 5,000,000".  That is the reason why we do not want to
    43        set up any limits.
    44
    45   Q.   Right.  When you use this for monitoring and you found that
    46        in a process from the live animal to the slaughtered animal
    47        to different steps of the phase before it becomes a
    48        finished product, if the level was rising all the time,
    49        would you be able to draw any conclusions, would that help
    50        with the monitoring? 
    51        A.  The level of? 
    52 
    53   Q.   If the TVCs found were rising at each stage?
    54        A.  The meat?
    55
    56   Q.   Yes.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What do you mean by "each stage"?
    59
    60   MR. MORRIS:  If the counts -- I do not know about the live

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