Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 60
1 you are someone who worked there for a month and saw the
2 animals or some of them anyway before they were
3 slaughtered?
4 A. I saw all of them before they were slaughtered. That
5 is my statutory duty to examine every animal.
6
7 Q. On that basis, as well as any other basis, you are being
8 asked if you can help as to the age of the culled cows?
9 A. I do not think I could. I would feel it would not be
10 right professionally to judge the animal's age by just
11 looking at them and performing an antemortem inspection.
12 On certain few animals where I performed the very thorough
13 antemortem examination on the basis of suspecting a disease
14 or a condition, I could perhaps tell that you, but we are
15 talking about one or two animals during a whole month,
16 otherwise you cannot possibly make a good judgment of an
17 animal's age. You are guessing, doing guesswork. You do
18 not know the animal's background or feeding unless you look
19 at its teeth.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: Do Jarretts have any policy on the age of cattle
22 they bought? Do they generally buy young, old or have they
23 just bought across the spectrum as far as you are
24 concerned?
25 A. I have no idea whether they had any buying preferences
26 in that sense.
27
28 MR. MORRIS: I think we have basically finished. We actually
29 have the dismissal letter that was faxed by Eville & Jones,
30 but I did not want to refer to it, partly because I have
31 not copied it. I have not read it in detail, really, also
32 because I was hoping to get the rest of the documents that
33 may throw light on the situation before I did so. I do not
34 know what Mr. Rampton's plans are; whether he wants to
35 start today or not?
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am going to leave it to Mr. Rampton whether
38 he starts cross-examining now. Mr. Rampton, whatever you
39 are minded at the moment to say about the need to obtain
40 instructions about cross-examination or the possible need
41 to recall witnesses, I would like you to cross-examine
42 absolutely as far as you can on the strength of present
43 instructions because, although there have been advances,
44 there were quite a lot of allegations in the original
45 statement upon which, I assume, you have taken instructions
46 if you wish to do so, quite apart from Mr. Bennett, whose
47 visits of course were limited.
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I quite agree, with respect.
50
51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have not, in fact, suggested that it be so,
52 but I do not see it as a case where you cannot start
53 cross-examination until you have taken further instructions
54 if you want.
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: I was anxious to do so. There are one or two
57 questions I would like to have answered so I can try to get
58 instructions about them overnight.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I suggest is, I would like to stop about
