Day 077 - 25 Jan 95 - Page 52
1 "visual hygiene", that is to say, hygiene of the people,
2 the services, the machinery and so on, instruments used,
3 and food safety for humans?
4 A. Yes, there is a correlation, there is bound to be.
5 What you are attempting to do is to ensure that the plant
6 is cleaned. What is most important in that is that it
7 gives all your operating staff the right attitude. It
8 follows that if it is physically clean in appearance, then
9 I mean, it is clean in other ways as well. What Mr. North
10 does not know is that the first job in the morning of the
11 laboratory is to go round and swab with bacteriology swabs
12 and take contact plates to ensure that the eight hours
13 cleaning has been carried out efficiently and the plant is
14 sterile.
15
16 Q. Presumably, those are legal requirements enforced on you,
17 are they not?
18 A. No, sir. They are not legal requirements; they are
19 good customer practice requirements.
20
21 Q. Can you read the last sense of what he writes here?
22 A. I have read it, sir.
23
24 Q. Can I ask you if you understand what it means?
25 A. No, I do not. I mean, to say that there is "an inverse
26 correlation between high visual standards and
27 microbiological standard", my experience of food plants in
28 several countries in the world, the cleanest ones are the
29 best ones because they pay attention to detail.
30
31 Q. Can you turn then, please, to paragraph 18? 14 to 17,
32 I think, are all about poultry which does not concern
33 you. We come back to the manufacture of hamburgers in
34 paragraph 18 where he says -- I had better read the last
35 paragraph of 17 -- "In this sense, it is fair to say that
36 the McDonald's operation, taken as a whole, is
37 intrinsically unhygienic - despite the emphasis on
38 wholesome appearance and allied attributes.
39
40 The same must be said of the beef burger operation. At the
41 slaughterhouse, there is great emphasis on keeping
42 individual animals apart to avoid cross-contamination and
43 the transfer of invisible micro organisms. The subsequent
44 bulking of large quantities of meat, cut from a large
45 number of individual animals, can do nothing other than
46 encourage the spread of contamination." What comment, if
47 any, do you have to make about that proposition,
48 Mr. Walker?
49 A. Well, for a start what is "large"? I mean, I have seen
50 plants in the United States of America where much larger
51 quantities of meat than what is handled in the United
52 Kingdom, and I think that coming back to what we were
53 saying a moment ago, if the machinery is cleaned down and
54 the machinery is sterilized, I do not see that what he says
55 is logical.
56
57 Q. Suppose that you have -- can we use a visual aid for a
58 moment -- two pieces of meat which we will call "A" and
59 "B"; "A" is the pink one and "B" is the yellow one.
60 Somewhere along the line this piece, the pink one, piece
