Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 63
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I thought that was probably so.
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: Thank you very much. Now Salmonellosis itself.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are you going to another tab?
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Have I been told what IEA, at the very front
10 of chicken gait, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, on the very
11 front of the cover? What is IEA?
12 A. It is the Institute of Economic Affairs, my Lord.
13
14 Q. I would like to know what it is, Mr. Rampton. Is it a
15 political body?
16 A. No. It is strictly a-political.
17
18 Q. It does not do research for any particular political
19 party?
20 A. No, absolutely not. It is a registered charity and it
21 very rigidly adheres to being political, although its
22 thinking tends to be right wing. Its ideas are more
23 closely associated with with Conservatives than other
24 parties.
25
26 MR. RAMPTON: Here, Mr. North, there was attack on the industry
27 by the Conservative ----
28 A. Yes, very much so.
29
30 Q. This book and your paper were written at least in part in
31 defence of egg industry?
32 A. Indeed so.
33
34 Q. In effect, what you were telling Mrs. Curry and others, I
35 do not know if she was the principal villain, she may not
36 have been?
37 A. Well, actually she was not.
38
39 Q. It was because she went public.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: She was trotting out the ----
42
43 MR. RAMPTON: The party line.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: --- what she had been fed by the Ministry
46 which she was ----
47
48 MR. RAMPTON: By the wrong bureaucrats and MAFF.
49 A. That was not MAFF actually; it was the Department of
50 Health.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, it was the Department of Health.
53
54 MR. RAMPTON: I have that wrong. My memory is very short. For
55 all that, the sentiments, the factual statements, the
56 expressions of opinion by you, whether through your own
57 mouth or with Mrs. Gorman in these books, I take it we can
58 take as being your honest, authentic statements of your own
59 views at the time?
60 A. Yes, and you infer completely correctly that my natural
