Day 104 - 15 Mar 95 - Page 71
1 demonstration?
2 A. I was.
3
4 Q. What I want to know this: Can you describe for us, please,
5 the tenor of her contribution to that conversation?
6 A. The conversation started in a friendly manner in which
7 she was asking for general information which I was trying
8 to respond to. After a little while on the phone, she
9 became much more aggressive and obviously wanted to tell me
10 her views about the particular situation, so the
11 conversation became, frankly, unproductive.
12
13 Q. Did she seem by that sage to be interested in what you had
14 to say or not?
15 A. I felt not.
16
17 Q. Penultimately, listeria, Dr. Pattison: I took you to say
18 yesterday that, in a sense, it originates in the ground and
19 in the soil?
20 A. Yes.
21
22 Q. Is that right? You could well find it in vegetables as you
23 could in chickens or anything else?
24 A. Yes, you could.
25
26 Q. Is its presence or growth in vegetable or animals
27 endogenous or not?
28 A. No, the growth on vegetables, for example, would be as
29 a result of soil contamination.
30
31 Q. So, if I ate a dirty carrot or a piece of chicory or celery
32 or even lettuce, I might get listeriosis, is that right?
33 A. It is unlikely that there would be an infectious dose
34 in a small amount of soil, but certainly the organism will
35 be present in soil and you may ingest some listeria
36 organisms, but unlikely to be sufficient to initiate food
37 poisoning.
38
39 Q. How would I get it off a chicken, if I did?
40 A. It is present on raw chicken. It is destroyed by
41 cooking. If it got on to cooked chicken, it would have to
42 be as a result of contamination from some other vehicle.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You say on raw chicken?
45 A. It can be present on raw chicken.
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: So its growth in the chicken is not endogenous?
48 A. It is not endogenous, no.
49
50 Q. Finally, this, Dr. Pattison: Again, as with your search
51 for a ventral cutter, Ms. Steel was heavily suggesting
52 yesterday that you were not much interested in finding
53 equipment to reduce or minimise or even prevent entirely
54 prestun shocks at the stunning bath. Do you remember that
55 line of cross-examination ---
56 A. Yes, I do.
57
58 Q. -- yesterday? Can I ask you this, we know that -- at least
59 I think we do -- that the reduction or minimisation of
60 prestun shocks is not a legislative requirement; it is
