Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 16


     
     1        residues in the actual food products.
     2
     3        Now, moving on from Dr. North to John Atherton.  To
     4        McDonald's approach to food safety, starting off with John
     5        Atherton.  He admitted that McDonald's receives between
     6        1,500 and 2,750 customer complaints of food poisoning a
     7        year, may be more than that, and in fact-----
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Was that UK?
    10
    11   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, and this would be purely what, as far as I
    12        remember, they would get at head office in terms of formal
    13        forms from the store, and, as we have heard, all the way
    14        under-pinned with McDonald's claims about systems.  We must
    15        remember the evidence of our witnesses, especially on this
    16        issue, as to the lack of...  that procedures basically get
    17        thrown out of the window when the necessity of having to
    18        serve the customers as quick as possible takes precedence.
    19        We would certainly say the example of Mike Logan saying
    20        "There were regular complaints, which when it came down to
    21        it, although we were promised incident report forms, we
    22        only got three from that store."  That was the Bath store.
    23
    24        Although I think, and I am not going to go into individual
    25        people's evidence in depth, I just have not had time, that
    26        would be an illustration of how we were led to believe we
    27        would get about 50 incident report forms from Bath and it
    28        turned out there were only three, and we believe the
    29        evidence demonstrates that incident report forms are almost
    30        never filled out in McDonald's stores.  That when people
    31        complained about undercooked food, for example, they may be
    32        given another burger; that if people bring a product back
    33        there is no guarantee anything will happen apart from being
    34        chucked in the bin, whatever, and that incident report
    35        forms are just very rarely filled out.  So the likelihood
    36        of customer complaints are anything between 10 times and 50
    37        times as many in terms of relevant complaints to
    38        undercooking of food and food poisoning.
    39
    40        He said the company also received complaints of foreign
    41        bodies in food sold, that was mainly chicken and bits of
    42        plastic.  Mr. Walker estimated 800 complaints a year
    43        regarding hamburgers, mostly concerning bits of plastic, so
    44        -----
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   What is the relevance of that save insofar
    47        as there may be any evidence, and I am not sure there was,
    48        that it actually injures the health of-----
    49
    50   MR. MORRIS:   I just think that it shows that-----
    51
    52   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Cooked mice in burgers and worms is all a
    53        bit of fun to hear about, what actual relevance does it
    54        have to any issue in the case?
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:   I think the relevance is to show whether their
    57        systems are foolproof and -----
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:   And how hygienic they are?
    60

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