Day 246 - 09 May 96 - Page 47
1 Q. You have not seen it?
2 A. No, I have not.
3
4 Q. Right. I think I served some extra pages from this, I do
5 not know if people remember. I gave the relevant pages to
6 all parties. I wonder if it is where it has been put.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is your purpose in putting it to Mr.
9 Preston?
10
11 MR. MORRIS: I was going to ask him: In general would you accept
12 the recommendation of a specific governmental committee
13 ----
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: How can he possibly answer that?
16
17 MR. MORRIS: I do not know.
18
19 (To the witness): As a matter of policy, does the
20 McDonald's Corporation ----
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I would not accept them all. I would want to
23 read them and see what I thought of them. What worries me
24 about this, I am not suggesting for a moment you mean to be
25 unfair, but it is clearly quite a thick Report. It has no
26 doubt got quite a lot of figures and a bit of science and
27 everything in it, and to ask a witness who, in any event,
28 is not an expert in the field to respond to it totally
29 cold, without having the opportunity to read it through and
30 deliberate over it, is in fact unfair, no doubt not
31 intended to be, but is in fact unfair and would mean that I
32 would probably be able to attach little weight to the
33 answers.
34
35 I am sent week in week out reports of the Law Commission,
36 Home Office, White Papers on this that and the other. They
37 take hours to read, if I can be bothered to do so.
38 Sometimes I agree with them; sometimes I disagree with
39 them. It does not seem to affect Government policy one
40 bit. I do not know how Mr. Preston can really offer
41 anything useful on it.
42
43 MR. MORRIS: (To the witness): I could ask a general question:
44 Your company presumably takes advice about matters of
45 expert opinion related to its business practices?
46 A. In many fields we take advice, yes.
47
48 Q. Including food safety and hygiene matters?
49 A. Yes.
50
51 Q. In general -- it might be a simple answer "yes" or "no" --
52 but when a specific committee is set up to look at a
53 problem such as E.Coli and, if you like, you can look at
54 the pamphlet to see who is on that committee and
55 contributed, to make recommendations, does your company
56 have a policy about whether it follows recommendations, or
57 whether it just takes its own advice and does not take much
58 notice of what ----
59 A. The people who are involved with the food safety issues
60 surrounding the incident at Preston and subsequent action
