Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 47
1 as a food-borne disease -----
2
3 Q. Can we leave campylobacter, please, in its proper place on
4 one side. This is about salmonellosis ---
5 A. Sorry.
6
7 Q. -- which is not a campylobacter poisoning, as I understand
8 it.
9 A. Well, that is the point you asked me to qualify it.
10 You see, I say salmonellosis is the only poultry disease
11 known to be harmful to man.
12
13 Q. I follow, yes. I was not listening carefully enough. You
14 are quite right. So, you are saying now that some poultry
15 disease, food poisoning disease, is caused by
16 campylobacter?
17 A. Yes, indeed, attributable to poultry.
18
19 Q. Yes.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: Can we just ask Mr. Rampton not to interrupt the
22 witness as he asks us not to interrupt his witnesses?
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: So one must modify that statement in 1976 by
25 (a) adding campylobacter to the category of poultry-borne
26 food poisoning cases and also by an overall increase in the
27 number of observable or confirmable cases; is that right?
28 A. Yes.
29
30 Q. You would say, would you, that 30,000, taking all due
31 account of unreported cases, is a large number in a
32 population annually of, what, I do not know, 57 million
33 people that eat something like 600 million chickens a year?
34 A. It is a large number in isolation, as a proportion,
35 I agree, and I have said, it is very small.
36
37 Q. Let us go on then in time, if we may, to a paper that you
38 wrote under the auspices of the Leeds Polytechnic (as it
39 then was) in 1989 at tab 8 called A Failure of
40 Government ---
41 A. Yes.
42
43 Q. -- which was, I think, in some sense, if I am right (and
44 you will correct me if I am not), a response to what
45 I might call the Edwina Curry egg salmonellosis scare?
46 A. Very much.
47
48 Q. It is tab 8; it is called A Failure of Government. I would
49 like you please, Mr. North, if you will, to turn to page
50 222. This is in appendix B of your paper.
51 A. Mr. Rampton, I have a problem here; my pages do not
52 have numbers.
53
54 Q. At the top left-hand corner? Internal page No. 222,
55 appendix B, paragraph B.4.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Sorry, which bundle are you in?
58
59 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, we are in the North bundle. At tab 8
60 there should be a paper entitled: "A Failure of
