Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 31
1 conscious.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Conscious in what sense?
4
5 MS. STEEL: He says that the birds that made up the 0.7 percent
6 mentioned above had a dry head so had failed to make
7 contact with the water bath stunner, which must mean that
8 they were not stunned at all.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, very well.
11
12 MS. STEEL: On page 22 of day 20 there was a reference to the
13 Codes of Practice for the Welfare of Poultry at Slaughter
14 in tab H, and the recommendation 33 states: Birds passing
15 through the stunner without being stunned may indicate that
16 the stunner is not functioning properly or is incorrectly
17 set up for the kind of bird being slaughtered. In these
18 circumstances, the problem must be rectified immediately.
19
20 And Dr. Gregory agreed that it was a matter of concern that
21 the birds were not being stunned.
22
23 On the following page, when I was asking him about the
24 birds not being stunned, he says that there are two causes
25 indicated previously.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which day are you on now?
28
29 MS. STEEL: Day 20, still, sorry, page 23. There are two
30 causes which were indicated previously. One is that you
31 have an under-sized bird, in which case the water bath
32 should be adjusted to eliminate the problem. The other
33 potential cause is that as the birds are being conveyed
34 over the line a bird may pull itself up while flapping its
35 wings and not touch the water, that is a cause as well.
36
37 And I asked him further on on the page: If the birds were
38 lifting their head would that be because they were trying
39 to avoid being.... And then he interrupted and said: It
40 is difficult to generalise, it could be a number of factors
41 causing disturbance which make them pull up and flap.
42 I asked him what about trying to escape. He said: That is
43 one possibility, yes, certainly. So there we have an
44 example about animals trying to escape, flapping about and
45 so on.
46
47 I would reiterate the point that I made earlier about the
48 fact that when inspections are carried out the process
49 quite often gets slowed down, and obviously we would say
50 that would apply to these circumstances, that the people
51 there would know that an inspection was being carried out
52 and they would be on their best behaviour and trying to
53 make things run in the most smooth manner that they could.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, the irony with that particular one, the
56 stun, is, if anything, it would make things worse, but none
57 of that detracts from the point you are making.
58
59 MS. STEEL: That would be for the pre-stun shocks. It would
60 not be for whether or not the birds got stunned.
