Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 32


     
     1        week of their lives in an attempt to reduce infectious
     2        diseases.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Now, is there a criticism of either of those
     5        two things so far as cruelty is concerned?
     6
     7   MS. STEEL:   Yes, the thing about antibiotics is in another
     8        section of the leaflet.  There is a criticism of the fact
     9        that the whole reason there are so many infectious diseases
    10        is because of the conditions which they are kept under.
    11        Such massive numbers of birds all in close confinement
    12        without any open air or individual attention is inevitably
    13        going to lead to the spread of disease.
    14
    15        Moving on to the broiler sheds, 20 percent of the chickens
    16        slaughtered at the Sun Valley plant are from company-owned
    17        broiler houses and about 80 percent are from private
    18        farmers who are on contract to Sun Valley.  That was day
    19        90, page 7, line 25, and that relates to the report that
    20        Dr. Gregory made after he had visited a Sun Valley broiler
    21        unit on 19th April 1993, which is referred to in his
    22        statement, which is yellow 9, rearing and slaughter, tab
    23        10.  He said, when he was being examined in chief that --
    24        unfortunately I am doing this from memory, because I did
    25        forget the notes.  I could not get the notes for Dr.
    26        Gregory.  I have not got them with me.  He said something
    27        to the effect that he was asked whether the conditions at
    28        Sun Valley were satisfactory, and rather than answering the
    29        question directly he compared it to the rest of the
    30        industry.
    31
    32   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Standards of the industry, 'the standard of
    33        the industry' he said on more than one occasion, but he
    34        said it in relation to this?
    35
    36   MS. STEEL:   Yes.  And he made various comments about the level
    37        of lighting and the methods of feeding and the water
    38        supply.
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Well, I can forget the lighting, because he
    41        clearly went on a day when the lighting had been turned up
    42        for some other reason.
    43
    44   MS. STEEL:   Yes.  I was going to say, the whole point is that
    45        he was only shown one unit and we would say, well, he
    46        agreed it was a Sun Valley unit rather than a contract
    47        supplier, and we would say that this was probably a better
    48        -- it is better than average, but may be a model broiler
    49        unit from the company's point of view, from Sun Valley's
    50        point of view, and that conditions in that unit were much 
    51        better than a lot of the other units which were used to 
    52        rear the chickens that ultimately go into McDonald's 
    53        product.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What evidence do I have of that?  You ask me
    56        to draw the inference.  I have got the witness you called
    57        about ----
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:   Mr. Bruton.
    60

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