Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 35
1 MS. STEEL: Um.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Your point is the same, whichever figure it
4 is. Quite frankly let us not spend time, you have raised
5 both figures, I don't think it is worth-----
6
7 MS. STEEL: The only reason I said that was just coming back to
8 it after all this time...
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is important, because one has to remember
11 the words in the actual leaflet - 'frequently result in
12 animals having their throats cut while still fully
13 conscious'. So it is important that one notes that
14 incident.
15
16 MS. STEEL: Yes.
17
18 MR JUSTICE BELL: Whatever one says about brain stem and that,
19 things of that kind.
20
21 MS. STEEL: One percent of the birds were decapitated without
22 being stunned and obviously if they had not been stunned
23 then they are having their throats cut whilst they are
24 still fully conscious, and one percent of birds is around
25 1,500 birds a day. I would say that that is frequent.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you have a reference for that?
28
29 MS. STEEL: The one percent of birds?
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. (Pause).
32
33 MS. STEEL: Yes. Well, it is in his statement. I would have
34 to find it from the transcript. It is the bit I was just
35 reading a moment ago: "One percent of the birds were
36 thought to have missed the water of the water bath stunner
37 and hence were not stunned. These birds also missed the
38 automatic cutter because their necks were not extended and
39 instead...."
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. So his evidence was that if a bird
42 missed the water, it would normally miss the automatic neck
43 cutter; so a man or woman does the cutting manually with a
44 knife. I have that in my notes immediately after "some
45 birds actually miss the water in the stun bath
46 completely". Dr. Gregory examined 200 birds, and
47 I understood him to say that one percent, that is two
48 birds, missed the water, but this was on an occasion other
49 than 19th April 1993. Then he went on to say that if the
50 bird missed the water, it would normally miss the automatic
51 neck cutter; presumably, because it is not hanging there,
52 effectively it might be said, deadweight; so a man or
53 woman does the cutting manually with a knife. Normally,
54 this would be a cut across the neck to bleed it out, but at
55 Sun Valley they were cutting off the whole head. Some
56 scientific research raises doubt about whether there is
57 instantaneous unconsciousness in a decapitated chicken.
58
59 MS. STEEL: At the rates that Dr. Pattison told us the birds
60 were being slaughtered per day, 170,000 birds, that would
