Day 089 - 15 Feb 95 - Page 68
1 get the round what is actually happening. It is only part
2 of a much larger equation. If you take the meat off a
3 chicken which has salmonella in its intestine, that meat
4 will not necessarily become contaminated with salmonella,
5 as I understand it. It is only if there is some leakage
6 from the gut which comes into contamination with the meat?
7 A. That is correct.
8
9 Q. If you put the deboned meat of 100 broilers in one
10 container, when it went in less than 1 per cent of the meat
11 would, therefore, be contaminated with salmonella. Suppose
12 only one in 10 birds there was some kind of rupture which
13 allowed contamination of its meat, you would have .1 per
14 cent of the meat going into that container would be
15 contaminated with salmonella. But it is this handling by
16 human agents by hand which takes that up to 25 per cent, is
17 it?
18 A. That is what we believe, yes.
19
20 Q. So in that instance, my example, it would be increased 250
21 times?
22 A. Yes.
23
24 Q. The proportion of meat?
25 A. That is correct.
26
27 Q. I do not know that it is one in 10 that there is some
28 rupture, but just to take that so I understand what has
29 happened.
30 A. Yes, that is correct.
31
32 MR. RAMPTON: I ought also to ask you this, and I am grateful
33 for that because it leads to this. Leaving aside the
34 presence of salmonella in the gut, are there other sources
35 of contamination on a bird or in a bird when it is brought
36 into the factory?
37 A. There is a possibility that we know that salmonella can
38 exist in the dust in poultry houses, and when birds come
39 into the factory it is possible that they can carry
40 salmonella on their feathers and on the outside of the body
41 surface. This is a more difficult thing to test, but I am
42 assuming that some could come in that way.
43
44 Q. Presently as matters stand, what is the principal defence
45 against illness by salmonella poisoning for humans?
46 A. Well, the prevention, to prevent it happening in the
47 first place food must be cooked and handled correctly. The
48 condition is not normally treated with antibiotics in
49 humans.
50
51 Q. No. I meant how do you avoid getting food poisoning from
52 salmonella assuming it is in the product?
53 A. If it is in the product you have to have a discipline
54 of handling raw meat and cooked meat separately using
55 separate utensils and separate areas to do it, and you must
56 cook the raw meat or whatever product it is correctly.
57
58 Q. So long as it is not possible to eliminate salmonella from
59 raw chicken meat, if I take a piece of raw product from Sun
60 Valley which has come from birds where there is 1 per cent
