Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 33


     
     1   MR. JUSTICE BELL: ---- the independent farmer.  What was her
     2        name?
     3
     4   MS. STEEL:   Oh, yes, sorry.  I was saying John Bruton, but yes,
     5        Vicky Watkins.  The conditions that were shown in the video
     6        taken by Vicky Watkins where chickens were clearly unable
     7        to walk and suffering from leg deformities and other health
     8        problems.  There is the evidence of Mr. Bruton.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes.
    11
    12   MS. STEEL:   I will not go into all these right now.  There is
    13        also the photograph which I took when I went to a Sun
    14        Valley unit in 1991 which showed the old style of drinkers
    15        and feeders, but on top of that there are also various
    16        admissions throughout the evidence of Dr. Patteson of when
    17        changes were made to the systems used in the broiler houses
    18        and how not all the broiler houses were at the same
    19        standard.
    20
    21        Dr. Patteson said - this was day 90, page 7, line 33 - the
    22        number of actual housing units within the company is
    23        probably something over 550 and 20 percent of them are
    24        company owned.  It would be approximately 110 company owned
    25        and 440 contractors.  And he said that a unit is one
    26        broiler shed.  He said that there were normally 20 to
    27        25,000 broilers in one shed.  That would be a modern shed.
    28        That was on day 90, page 7, line 51.  And then he said that
    29        some of the older sheds are smaller and so they do not
    30        house so many.  (Pause)
    31
    32        He said that broiler houses were generally stocked with
    33        roughly twice as many males to females and with a partition
    34        between them, and that the females were taken out for
    35        slaughter at 42 days old weighing approximately two
    36        kilograms and the males were slaughtered at 52 days
    37        weighing approximately three kilograms.  The references for
    38        that are day 89, page 46, line 11, and day 90, page 20,
    39        line 34.
    40
    41        He said that at 42 days old the males weigh about 2.2
    42        kilograms and that in their last 10 days the males put on
    43        about 0.7 or 0.8 of a kilo.  And he went on to say, so that
    44        at 52 days old the stocking density is going to be nearly
    45        as much as at 42 days old.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause a moment.  (Pause)  Yes?
    48
    49   MS. STEEL:   Obviously, I mean, our argument is that the
    50        chickens do not have freedom of movement for their entire 
    51        lives, because they are all stuck in this shed and they 
    52        cannot get outside, and effectively they have the same 
    53        space throughout, in terms of how much space they have each
    54        throughout their entire lives; it is just that obviously
    55        they take up less of it when they are   smaller.  But
    56        particularly for the last few weeks of  their lives, they
    57        are crammed in in a fashion which is particularly -----
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Do you mean weeks or days?
    60

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