Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 19


     
     1
     2   MR. MORRIS:   His expert recommendation was the minimum,
     3        internal cooking temperature should be 73 degrees
     4        Centigrade.  That was his expert opinion, and that is
     5        backed up by the chart.  That is in the previous large
     6        paragraph on that page, and that, we would say, is backed
     7        up by the official recent report for the government, by
     8        the...  whatever it was called, the Virotoxic Committee.
     9        Therefore, we would say-----
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   He did not...  He said he went to 73
    12        degrees.  He did not go quite in those terms.  He pointed
    13        out that the temperatures were all over 70 degrees, albeit
    14        perhaps a fraction over 70 degrees, but that by the time
    15        the temperature had been taken there was a time lapse from
    16        the point of cooking.  My advice is not to get bogged down
    17        in the evidence of a witness who has not been called by
    18        either party.  You can accept it or not but, although you
    19        can pick points from Mr. Clarke's statement, if I am to
    20        take it into account it is overwhelmingly in favour of
    21        McDonald's on this issue.  If he had been called there
    22        might have been questions you would have asked him to
    23        challenge his end conclusions, but there is no doubt those
    24        were his end conclusions if one reads the report fairly
    25        from an independent point of view.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:   On this specific matter, again, we would say that
    28        Dr. North and ^^^ Maya Hoffe both recognised the authority
    29        and common sense of the recommendations in the report for
    30        the government.
    31
    32   MR. RAMPTON:   I have to -----
    33
    34   MR. MORRIS:   The E.Coli report, which we will rely on.
    35
    36   MR. RAMPTON:   I am sorry, my Lord, to intervene, which I really
    37        have to.  This is about the fourth opportunity I have had
    38        and it is the first that I have taken.  Mr. Morris has
    39        several times mentioned in connection with Dr. North's
    40        evidence, amongst other occasions, this report by the
    41        government.  Your Lordship will remember that an attempt
    42        was made to do that when Mr. North came back on the second
    43        occasion and your Lordship specifically ruled that he could
    44        not give that evidence because we had had no notice of it.
    45
    46   MR. MORRIS:   Well, the evidence was given and extracts of the
    47        report were read out and the witness commented on them.
    48        And so, as far as we got before we may have been stopped,
    49        whatever, I cannot remember now, but we rely on all the
    50        evidence that has come from that report that we referred
    51        to.
    52
    53        So then moving on to McDonald's on this subject, in their
    54        operations manual set a minimum internal temperature to be
    55        reached of 64 degrees Centigrade Celsius for a cooked
    56        burger.  So in the '80s in the USA, I cannot remember
    57        exactly when it was, but it continued into the 1990s, they
    58        were well below anybody's recommended cooking time,
    59        including their own current UK recommending cooking
    60        temperature.

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