Day 106 - 23 Mar 95 - Page 47
1 is going through the system, and there is not always a
2 direct correlation between the visible signs and the actual
3 quality of the product coming through.
4
5 Now, we followed the progress of the meat coming into the
6 delivery bay. It comes in what I have learned to call
7 combo bins, what I understand are called by some staff
8 "compost bins", which is not altogether inaccurate because
9 what they do is they have these very large square bins in
10 which meat is packed, squashed together, and you have the
11 produce of many, many animals all confined together in one
12 pack repeated many, many times.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: They are actually the same shape as some
15 makes of compost which you can make buy at your local
16 garden centre, so it might not have been any reference to
17 the food, might it?
18 A. Well, it is possible -----
19
20 Q. You know the kind I mean where the panels slot into each
21 other?
22 A. Yes. Both in terms of visible description and function
23 because, if you wanted to compost the stuff that is
24 certainly how would you do it. It is not, in my view, by
25 any means the ideal way to transport meat. The tradition,
26 of course, in carrying meat as carcasses is to have them
27 hung and have free air circulation. That way you keep the
28 meat dry, you keep it well ventilated and thus keep it dry
29 and also keep it separate.
30
31 To squash it altogether into one mass means that whatever
32 contamination level has been on any one part is then
33 shared, or the risk of sharing, with all the other bits.
34 It also means in part you are creating conditions with
35 anaerobic conditions, conditions without air, which foster
36 certain types of spoilage organisms. It means you are
37 wholly reliant on just one safeguard as opposed to a
38 variety of safeguards, i.e. that temperature control to
39 stop the stuff spoiling.
40
41 But it does mean, inevitably, that you are increasing
42 opportunities for cross-contamination. It also means that,
43 in terms of public health, where in the event of an
44 outbreak where you desperately need to track back through
45 the system desirably in many cases to find the farms and
46 individual animals, that this amorphous batch has really
47 lost any identity. I would find it hard to believe you
48 could take any one piece of meat out and give any reliable
49 guide as to where it came from. So, it has lost its
50 identity by bulking up, and it is bulked up in such a way
51 as to share contamination.
52
53 That said, of course, process is then amplified as it goes
54 through into the hoppers and is mixed up altogether into
55 the burger production; a mechanism, of course, for sharing
56 contamination, at the same time building into the body of
57 the product with the inherent problems of now no longer is
58 it a surface phenomenon, but now any contamination is
59 distributed uniformally throughout the whole substance of
60 the product.
