Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 32
1 or lower than the minimum temperature, well, than the
2 temperature that they are seeking when they do the internal
3 tests?
4 A. More often than not in the nature of the things, the
5 error is likely to go on the high side.
6
7 Q. So a result maybe of 75 degrees or 80 degrees, it may be
8 that there are areas that are lower than that?
9 A. Indeed so.
10
11 Q. Does this relate to your view about -- I know it is hygiene
12 -- the visual hygiene versus inherent hygiene?
13 A. That is very much the point, demonstrated by a large
14 number -- in my observations, from a large number of food
15 poisoning outbreaks and papers I believe I have submitted
16 to the court, that hygiene is the prevention of disease.
17 That is the definition, and the purpose of hygiene is to
18 prevent disease. Ergo, a unit which produces or causes
19 disease is, by definition, not hygienic.
20
21 Now, it is very often the case that that premises may be
22 brilliantly equipped, very clean, brightly lit, well
23 ventilated, with staff extremely well dressed, very smart,
24 purposefully managed, yet by the very fact of it producing
25 a food poisoning case or cases means, by definition, it is
26 not hygienic. In that sense, one does see with
27 almost -----
28
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So if you served a million meals and you had
30 accurate checks for food poisoning as a result, i.e. if you
31 got over all the problems we have about reporting and so
32 on, if you had out of a million meals a dozen instances of
33 food poisoning, that would mean that it was not hygienic in
34 your terminology, would it?
35 A. Exactly so, my Lord. In fact, 12 out of a million is
36 very, very poor performance, if you bear in mind how many
37 meals even an ordinary restaurant can sell over a year.
38 That would be an unacceptable level of failure. Yes,
39 I would in those terms say that that operation was not a
40 hygienic operation. In a sense, and it is widely agreed by
41 so many authorities, that food poisoning is preventable
42 and, therefore, the definition of a hygienic premises is,
43 essentially, its ability to prevent food poisoning.
44
45 MR. MORRIS: There is something I was going to ask you -----
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It just occurs to me that eating three meals
48 a day, a person would have to live for a thousand years to
49 eat a million meals?
50 A. Yes, but in the sense of, say, community feeding (which
51 is what we are talking about), if you are serving 200 meals
52 a day which is a very small restaurant, say, twice a day
53 which would be a typical restaurant that does not run a
54 breakfast, that means you are serving 400 meals a day, say,
55 330 so that you can multiply it up; that is a substantial
56 amount of meals. Let us work this out. 400 x 300 is,
57 what, is that 120,000?
58
59 Q. If it was 400 meals a day, or slightly more, if it was all
60 seven days a week, that would be 3,000, it would be about a
