Day 101 - 10 Mar 95 - Page 65
1 buy in meat that has already been deboned for process, for
2 further processing for other markets.
3
4 Q. As far as you are aware, they do not have farms elsewhere
5 in Europe then?
6 A. I do not believe they have their own farms anywhere
7 else in Europe.
8
9 MR. MORRIS: Just one clarification point: In your statement
10 you said -- I do not know if this came up before -- that in
11 1989 the maximum permissible level of TVC, microbiological
12 TVC, was 5,000,000, and since then it has been raised to
13 10,000,000 for products supplied to McDonald's; is that
14 correct?
15 A. No, that is not correct. What specific?
16
17 Q. It is paragraph 21 in your statement.
18
19 MR. RAMPTON: Volume yellow VII.
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Your first statement is tab 1, divider 1, and
22 paragraph 21 Mr. Morris would like you to look at.
23
24 THE WITNESS: What that actually says -- this is referring to
25 the Sun Valley internal specs. -- in 1989 they were working
26 to 5,000,000 total count. Now they work to 1,000,000.
27
28 MR. MORRIS: What is that for? For products, finished products?
29 A. No, that is for -- essentially, that is for the raw
30 meat. McDonald's make their own specifications for the
31 finished product.
32
33 Q. It says in 21 "which we require from products which are
34 supplied to us"?
35 A. Yes, at the appendix there are details of the
36 specifications there. The Sun Valley actually work to a
37 slightly tighter specification than we insist on, but they
38 have put that on themselves, if you like.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you look at appendix F, divider F, both
41 the TVCs, wherever they appear, are 1,000,000?
42 A. Yes.
43
44 Q. Whether they are raw or finished McNuggets and finished
45 McChicken?
46 A. Yes.
47
48 Q. What you say in paragraph 21 is: "These differ from those
49 which were used in 1989 only in the sense that the maximum
50 permissible level of TVC was 5,000,000 at that time". Are
51 you saying now that that sentence was meant to refer to the
52 raw meat but not the finished product?
53 A. Yes, the McDonald's spec. has always been and still is
54 5,000,000 on our finished product, and that is what Sun
55 Valley used to work to on the finished product. Now, they
56 know that they can control that even further and so they
57 work to 1,000,000. I agree, the paragraph 21 is a bit
58 confusing.
59
60 MR. MORRIS: There are a lot of grey area in this whole area.
