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.

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