Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 24
1 what our experts, what government experts, what the real
2 hands-on evidence of our employees, our witnesses who are
3 ex-employees, and the reality is, for whatever reason, that
4 the system is flawed and it is fragile and it is breached
5 on a regular basis. And whether the public know about it
6 or not, is another matter. Maybe it is one of the reasons
7 people are turning away from eating products like beef.
8
9 MS. STEEL: Can I make one final point on it, which is that if
10 there is no problem for McDonald's, you know, if there is
11 no reason why they -- I don't know -- well, why do they not
12 just introduce the recommended times that are recommended
13 by the government in order to cut down the risks. You
14 know, there must be some reason why they are not
15 introducing them. The only reason that is, you know, on
16 the horizon for anyone to see, is basically that it is
17 going to take longer to produce the food and going to cut
18 their profits. McDonald's have not offered any explanation
19 for why they are not cooking at the recommended
20 temperatures.
21
22 MR. MORRIS: They will say the temperatures are adequate and
23 then in three years' time they will put them up another two
24 seconds or another few degrees, as they have done over the
25 last 10 years. They argued, no doubt, at each stage that
26 they were adequate then, but they cannot argue that any
27 more.
28
29 Now, stepping back to the beginning of the process, Dr.
30 Long, who is a very experienced researcher, had worked as a
31 researcher for Glaxos for 40 years or something and had
32 researched also conditions on farms and at markets and in
33 transportation and in slaughter houses, studying firsthand
34 some of the welfare and other problems, health problems
35 associated with animal husbandry and slaughter, and his
36 evidence was that animals had been turned into what he
37 called production machines subject to stress and distress,
38 disease, abuse, and a short and totally unnatural life.
39 And dairy cattle particularly were under stress.
40
41 The whole series of what he called production diseases
42 affected dairy cows, because of the excessive pressure of
43 production. He also criticised the use of growth boosters
44 and other performance enhancers which were masqueraded as
45 animal health products. He said the diseases caused by
46 modern farming methods and the drugs used to combat them
47 not only caused problems for the animals but also risks for
48 human health too. He shared concerns about the risks of
49 eating meat containing antibiotic, hormone and pesticide
50 residues.
51
52 Mark Pattison for McDonald's from Sun Valley, he made some
53 references relevant to this part of the case. He agreed
54 that broiler houses provide the ideal conditions for the
55 rapid spread of viral diseases like gumboro disease. He
56 said that from their arrival to five days before slaughter
57 the birds' food contained growth promoters; quote, the ones
58 normally used are zinc, bacitracin, Virginia Mycin or
59 Avoparcin, unquote, which are antibiotic compounds.
60
