Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 37


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do we really need to go into this?  No-one
     3        has suggested that McDonald's have any plan to have tunnel
     4        cooking.  I have the point that that is Mr. North's
     5        suggestion for safer cooking.
     6
     7   MR. MORRIS:  It is just that often Mr. Rampton throws up the
     8        point that, "Well, what else could be done?" if we
     9        criticised, "What is our positive case?"
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I have got the message, that is all I am
    12        saying.  What is the incidence of E.coli -- forget whether
    13        it can be traced back to source -- of laboratory confirmed
    14        E.coli?  Does E.coli tend to be rather nasty or can you
    15        have a lot of mild bouts of it?
    16        A.  Both, my Lord.
    17
    18   Q.   Do you know what the figures are for annual incidence of
    19        identified, confirmed incidence of E.coli poisoning?
    20        A.  The recent figures have not been published.  In the
    21        order of -----
    22
    23   Q.   Do you have any figures at all?
    24        A.  Yes.  You are talking about hundreds rather than
    25        thousands.
    26
    27   Q.   Per annum in this country?
    28        A.  Per annum and only recently.  That is off-set by the
    29        extreme severity of the condition.
    30
    31   Q.   What do you mean "off-set by"?
    32        A.  In the sense it is a very -- the recorded cases are
    33        very, very serious effects, you know, kidney failure.
    34
    35   Q.   That is why I started by asking you whether it tended to be
    36         -- I may not have put it very clearly -- E.coli poisoning
    37        tended to be severe or more mild.
    38        A.  I said "both".  The suspicion is that (and it is only a
    39        suspicion) in fact it is probably a lot more common than we
    40        have suspected, only that the majority of cases may be
    41        very, very mild and, therefore, not reported.   It seems
    42        that possibly only the more serious cases with the very
    43        distinctive symptoms are actually identified.
    44
    45        Until very recently, and even now in the majority of
    46        laboratories you do not actually test for E.coli 0157, it
    47        is only very recently that testing is able to do so, is
    48        able to find it in specimens from patients.  There is a
    49        number of food poisoning cases come to you where you are
    50        unable to identify anything through your routine screening. 
    51 
    52   Q.   But, presumably, the hundreds per annum have been since you 
    53        have been able to identify it?
    54        A.  Yes, quite so.
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:  I think we are fairly near to finishing, as far as
    57        what we can do.  What is the situation with the rest of
    58        this evidence, because if the matters around the Preston
    59        incident and the pesticides issue are being left over, what
    60        is the course that we should take now?

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