Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 38
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You can close your examination-in-chief now.
3 I will invite Mr. Rampton to cross-examine save on Preston
4 and pesticide residues. You have leave to recall Mr. North
5 on Preston and pesticide residues. If you have thought of
6 something else in the meantime, I may well give you leave
7 to reopen your examination-in-chief, but it must be on
8 something which you have given notice of to McDonald's,
9 because you have, in fact, asked Mr. North questions on all
10 the matters which have appeared in his disclosed reports
11 which you have wished to do so. So, apart from
12 those -- I can summarise it in this way: I am unlikely to
13 stop you asking Mr. North when he returns questions about
14 something which you have given notice of to McDonald's.
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16 MR. MORRIS: It may be useful to break for lunch, then we may
17 have one or two questions after lunch.
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19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Very well.
20
21 (Luncheon Adjournment)
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23 MR. MORRIS: When you were talking before about the one food
24 poisoning incident out of a million meals would be evidence
25 of an unhygienic system, could you clarify or elaborate on
26 that?
27 A. Well, one failure in one million or one failure is an
28 indication of a system failure. It is an indication of the
29 potential for the system to fail. If the system has a
30 capability to fail, then it does not have enough reserve
31 safety margin within it to guarantee safety. After all, if
32 it can fail once, it can fail again. Therefore, within
33 that context, I regard evidence of failure as evidence of a
34 system which is not sound and, therefore, unhygienic.
35
36 Q. What do you mean by "failure"?
37 A. The purpose of the system, the safeguards built within
38 the system, are to prevent food poisoning.
39
40 Q. What I mean is when you say "failure", are you referring to
41 an unavoidable fluke or are you referring to some
42 procedural ---
43 A. The view I take ---
44
45 Q. -- failure?
46 A. -- is that food poisoning in the terms and the context
47 that has been discussed today is wholly avoidable. Given
48 that premise, a case or outbreak of food poisoning is
49 evidence of the failure of the system to prevent it. So,
50 in other words, the food poisoning is evidence of failure
51 of the system.
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53 Ergo, if the system is capable of failure, it is not a
54 system which is capable of being find as wholly hygiene,
55 i.e. it has failed to prevent disease. That links back to
56 the definition of hygiene, which is hygiene is the science
57 of prevention of disease and, in the context of food
58 hygiene, the prevention of food poisoning. Therefore, to
59 define an operation as "hygienic" is to define an operation
60 which is capable of preventing food poisoning. Ergo, if
