Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 60
1 country, so the conditions of the industry in general would
2 be relevant.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I thought, I may be wrong, that his answer
5 with regard to castration was the same for bought in.
6 I realise that there were some practices which were not
7 carried out on his farms which were or might be on a
8 proportion of the farms from which they bought in pigs, for
9 instance, tethering was an example.
10
11 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, again not since the mid-1980s is my
12 recollection.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The situation with regard to pigs is
15 potentially rather different to cattle, because whereas
16 beef may come to McKey's from a variety of sources which
17 have not been identified and which, in any event, have not
18 been inspected, even if they have been identified have not
19 been inspected, by a potential witness of yours. So,
20 I understand that your approach perforce is to adduce
21 evidence of general practices in the industry and say,
22 probably those practices prevail in at least some, if not
23 all, the farms, abattoirs, whatever, which produce beef for
24 McKey's.
25
26 The situation is rather different when we come to pigs
27 because, save in so far as you are going to say that
28 Mr. Bowes was not telling the truth or was inaccurate in a
29 respect, we are really only concerned with the situation as
30 he has described it on Bowes' farms or on the farms of
31 suppliers of Bowes. I know that within the last year,
32 I think it was, about six other suppliers have been taken
33 on, but neither side has made any real point in relation to
34 that. Certainly, as I understand it, in 1989 or 1990 we
35 are really concerned only with Bowes.
36
37 MS. STEEL: I think the thing is that Mr. Bowes obviously knows
38 about the pigs on his own farms and he also knew about the
39 pigs where they owned the pigs that were sent out to other
40 farms to be reared by the contract farmers. As he said, 60
41 per cent of the production through the slaughterhouse was
42 bought in from other producers, and he would not know what
43 the conditions were for those pigs, which is a considerable
44 percentage of what is going through. They are going to be
45 pigs that are general industry standard.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You might be right, but it was not how
48 I interpreted his evidence. Some pigs came from some long
49 way away, but certainly in certain regards he purported to
50 know quite a lot about it. I think the best thing is at 10
51 to 4 rather than start searching round just to see what he
52 did and did not say ----
53
54 THE WITNESS: May I make a point, my Lord?
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
57
58 THE WITNESS: Are we not also talking about practices in other
59 countries? It is an international practice.
60
