Day 094 - 01 Mar 95 - Page 59
1
2 Q. Yes.
3 A. Yes.
4
5 Q. Have you seen any of those?
6 A. No, I have not.
7
8 Q. Never?
9 A. No. The same thing. I have seen their heads get
10 contaminated, yes, but they are then separated from the
11 line. But I have never seen anybody, especially an
12 employee, removing a Federal tag.
13
14 Q. The final paragraph, what is written there, would that
15 concern you if that was true?
16 A. Yes, I would be concerned if I read that.
17
18 Q. If it was true would you instruct your suppliers to
19 discontinue purchasing beef from Montfort?
20 A. No. That part of it is not part of the meat that we
21 buy. So, I cannot make that kind of decision.
22
23 Q. Those lymph nodes and things like that, they can be
24 indicators for other problems that are in the animal, can
25 they not?
26 A. Yes and no, but it has nothing to do with our side of
27 business. Again, by reading a paragraph I cannot make a
28 decision as important as that one. I would have to find
29 the facts. I cannot make decisions based on that. It is
30 hard to speculate.
31
32 Q. If you turn over the page and just read the following
33 paragraph?
34 A. Page 38, right?
35
36 Q. Yes, that is right. The paragraph at the bottom of the
37 page, not the conflicts with the regulators.
38 A. OK.
39
40 Q. Would that surprise you? If that was true would it
41 surprise you?
42 A. No, it would not surprise me.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I think is being put is that would it
45 surprise you if a high count of Escherichia -- is that how
46 it is pronounced? It is the E in E. coli?
47 A. That is correct. If you test for it there is a wide
48 range of species that will fall into that category. E.coli
49 is just 0157.
50
51 Q. It does not mean to say it is 0157?
52 A. That is correct. It does not mean it is harmful. What
53 would surprise me is that this meat in the process was
54 contaminated by the inspector, it was temperature abuse by
55 inspector, because probably it did not go into a
56 refrigerated container. There are a lot of things that
57 could happen. So if you do that you obviously get those
58 kinds of results. Under those conditions, does it surprise
59 me, absolutely not.
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