Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 34
1 vat was for shortening, then it is used for cooking, it is
2 hot, this is the temperature it is set at, but you will
3 still get people who maybe, say, drop a french fry in there
4 or drop something in there as they are cooking and put
5 their hand in after it.
6
7 Q. It says "slipped"?
8 A. It does not say "slipped"; it says: "Hand slipped into
9 the vat", it does not say the hand -----
10
11 Q. The implication is it was not done deliberately?
12 A. No -----
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It does not mean it was a slip on the floor.
15
16 MR. MORRIS: I am just saying that accidentally a person's hand
17 goes into hot oil or some part of that palm, that is not an
18 untypical thing?
19 A. We are not going to deny that there are fryers in the
20 kitchen and that from time to time people do burn their
21 hand on it, one way or another. Again, I do not know the
22 circumstances of this accident and whether it is one that
23 again meant something to us, or could have meant something
24 to us that we could have learnt from generally, I do not
25 know, but certainly it is the sort of thing I would expect
26 the management team to follow up on locally.
27
28 Coming back to this "it could not happen to me" scenario,
29 if managers follow up on accidents, make sure they keep
30 crew up-to-date, if something serious does occur, then it
31 does chip away at that "it cannot happen to me".
32
33 Q. There is also quite a few references to filtering, which
34 I think you have already identified as a hazardous task,
35 the filtering unit. But in referring to shortening
36 splashing or going over there -- on that page, for example,
37 there are two above that one I just referred to,
38 "shortening over foot from the filtering process". Is
39 that something you found that happens at a typical store?
40 A. You know, as we have discussed before, the inherent
41 hazard with filtering, certainly as we used to do here, was
42 from time to time you could get a splash. That is why we
43 specified protective equipment but, again, because
44 technology has moved on, we are now starting to see stores
45 that have self filtering vats. There is no need to take
46 the shortening out every night. The vats will filter the
47 shortening themselves. So that, again, is reducing the
48 risk there.
49
50 Q. But have you introduced that in some pilot stores or
51 something?
52 A. It is going into new stores. It is still technology
53 that is settling down, shall we say? So, if you are coming
54 to, should we put it in all restaurants, we have not done
55 so yet, but its something we have an open mind on, and,
56 just recently, have retrofitted 100 restaurants with the
57 new types for all sorts of reasons, but that is one of the
58 benefits in there too.
59
60 The other thing, as I mentioned before, we are looking at
