Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 75
1 understood it, is why you should say that the general
2 concern is the very high level of salmonella contamination
3 and other micro-organisms, pathogenic micro-organisms,
4 found in these meats. What does it mean?
5 A. It is the -- "high proportion", I concede -----
6
7 Q. You do not mean numbers?
8 A. I concede the "high pro"portion causes concern with, if
9 you remember my earlier qualification, that you cannot
10 guarantee -- and please be aware of this -- you can say it
11 is a rule of thumb that the level is low, but you cannot
12 guarantee it.
13
14 Q. The purpose of doing microbiological testing, either at the
15 abattoir or in the food processing plant or both, you say
16 pointless, purposeless, if you what you are trying to
17 discover is the number of batches or pieces of meat that
18 are actually infested or contaminated or infected or
19 whatever.
20 A. I do not think quite so.
21
22 Q. Do not go through it again, but I understand the point you
23 are making is that you cannot expect to be able to declare
24 the meat safe by a sampling system of that kind, because
25 for however many negatives you get, you do not know how
26 many positives there might be there which you have not
27 spotted; is that right?
28 A. You cannot say under the system of -----
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you keep your voice up?
31 A. Sorry. You cannot say under that system that you can
32 make any kind of assurance that that particular target
33 organism that you are sampling for is absent.
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: Suppose, Mr. North, that is not the purpose of the
36 operation; suppose the purpose of the operation is to see
37 how often you get positive results or excessive results
38 from a particular supplier, what then?
39 A. Well, we made the distinction, please, between sampling
40 on TVCs, and I saw no fault in the sampling programme for
41 TVCs in respect to the batches, that I saw fault in using
42 that methodology to try to identify specific pathogens.
43
44 Q. No, TVCs tells us two things, do they not?
45 A. Do they?
46
47 Q. They tell us one thing, basically, which is what we are
48 looking for if we are a meat processor, what risk the meat
49 has of being spoiled by the time it reaches its
50 destination? It is principally a spoilage measure, is it
51 not?
52 A. It can be. I am, sorry, I am beginning to fall apart
53 on your proposition. You see, the TVCs are so notoriously
54 unreliable and so variable that they do have very, very
55 limited use. Quite frankly, the thrust, and very much the
56 consensus of scientific opinion these days, is to move away
57 from them. This is why HACCP has been introduced to get
58 away from end point testing.
59
60 Q. Is not one of the features of HACCP that you are not trying
