Day 247 - 10 May 96 - Page 65
1 MS. STEEL: Because he is in charge of litigation.
2
3 MR. MORRIS: If your solicitors...
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Dear me, if that carried the matter any
6 further the only witness we need have had in the case was
7 Mr. Preston. He says he is not even sure what the
8 implement is called. You have got...
9
10 MR. MORRIS: If your solicitors approve of an apology that is
11 published as a retraction to an article then the solicitors
12 will be under your instructions and they would be stating
13 what would be McDonald's policy; is that correct?
14 A. I do not know that that is strictly true.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If they have it right. You really cannot
17 take this any further. You can take it further in
18 argument, but you cannot usefully take it one jot further
19 with Mr. Preston.
20
21 MS. STEEL: Just one final point. Does it concern you that the
22 situation, as we have heard it on the evidence so far in
23 the court, is that you were using the captive bolt pistol
24 at that time, or your suppliers were -- does it concern you
25 that a newspaper has been forced to print an apology which
26 is incorrect?
27 A. If they were made to do something that is incorrect it
28 bothers me. I do not know that the article in its entirety
29 is correct at all, however. In my experience, working as a
30 young boy on a farm, where there is now visiting abattoirs,
31 I have never seen anything like one third of the animals
32 have a problem come the beginning of the slaughtering
33 process. It is not even a decimal point of that in my own
34 experience, but the answer to your brief question was, yes,
35 if we ask someone to do something that they should not have
36 done it troubles me.
37
38 Q. Right. Does it also trouble you that 3 former
39 co-defendants apologised for some matters in this court
40 -- obviously, not in this particular courtroom but in the
41 High Court building -- which have now been withdrawn from
42 the record by Mr. Rampton on your behalf?
43
44 MR. RAMPTON: What does that mean?
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do not bother to answer that question. It
47 does not help me towards any issue in this case at all.
48
49 MS. STEEL: Can I just ask you, in your evidence-in-chief you
50 said that the Preston outbreak of food poisoning was
51 treated seriously and that when you heard about it you were
52 upset about this, or some word equivalent. In his opening
53 speech Mr. Rampton said that McDonald's is a very large
54 company and that it served 500 million meals in the UK
55 alone and there are bound to be some mistakes in any large
56 organisation, and I think we have heard that from some of
57 the other witnesses that have come on behalf of the
58 company.
59
60 Then you went on to say that, so, if you only have one case
