Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 60


     
     1        country, so the conditions of the industry in general would
     2        be relevant.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I thought, I may be wrong, that his answer
     5        with regard to castration was the same for bought in.
     6        I realise that there were some practices which were not
     7        carried out on his farms which were or might be on a
     8        proportion of the farms from which they bought in pigs, for
     9        instance, tethering was an example.
    10
    11   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, again not since the mid-1980s is my
    12        recollection.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The situation with regard to pigs is
    15        potentially rather different to cattle, because whereas
    16        beef may come to McKey's from a variety of sources which
    17        have not been identified and which, in any event, have not
    18        been inspected, even if they have been identified have not
    19        been inspected, by a potential witness of yours.  So,
    20        I understand that your approach perforce is to adduce
    21        evidence of general practices in the industry and say,
    22        probably those practices prevail in at least some, if not
    23        all, the farms, abattoirs, whatever, which produce beef for
    24        McKey's.
    25
    26        The situation is rather different when we come to pigs
    27        because, save in so far as you are going to say that
    28        Mr. Bowes was not telling the truth or was inaccurate in a
    29        respect, we are really only concerned with the situation as
    30        he has described it on Bowes' farms or on the farms of
    31        suppliers of Bowes.  I know that within the last year,
    32        I think it was, about six other suppliers have been taken
    33        on, but neither side has made any real point in relation to
    34        that.  Certainly, as I understand it, in 1989 or 1990 we
    35        are really concerned only with Bowes.
    36
    37   MS. STEEL:   I think the thing is that Mr. Bowes obviously knows
    38        about the pigs on his own farms and he also knew about the
    39        pigs where they owned the pigs that were sent out to other
    40        farms to be reared by the contract farmers.  As he said, 60
    41        per cent of the production through the slaughterhouse was
    42        bought in from other producers, and he would not know what
    43        the conditions were for those pigs, which is a considerable
    44        percentage of what is going through.  They are going to be
    45        pigs that are general industry standard.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You might be right, but it was not how
    48        I interpreted his evidence.  Some pigs came from some long
    49        way away, but certainly in certain regards he purported to
    50        know quite a lot about it.  I think the best thing is at 10 
    51        to 4 rather than start searching round just to see what he 
    52        did and did not say ---- 
    53
    54   THE WITNESS:  May I make a point, my Lord?
    55
    56   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    57
    58   THE WITNESS:  Are we not also talking about practices in other
    59        countries?  It is an international practice.
    60

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