Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 74
1 MR. RAMPTON: About another quarter of an hour.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Unless there is anyone in court who will be
4 greatly inconvenienced by that, we will go on to that
5 extent.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: I am grateful to your Lordship. There are only
8 two other things I want to ask Mr. North about.
9
10 (To the witness): Mr. North -- this may have been a slip
11 of the tongue or it may have been that I did not properly
12 understand what you said -- do you have a copy of
13 yesterday's transcript because I think it is only fair that
14 he should have it. My Lord, this is page 15 of yesterday's
15 transcript.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just give me the references and do not read
18 too quickly.
19
20 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, it is day 106, 23rd March 1995, page 15
21 starting at line 31. This is in your evidence-in-chief,
22 Mr. North. Mr. Morris was asking you questions and he
23 asked you this: "What are your concerns about specifically
24 chicken and minced meat as used in burgers and food
25 poisoning?" Answer by you: "The general concern is the
26 very high level of salmonella contamination and other
27 micro-organisms, pathogenic micro-organisms, found in these
28 meats", and then you go on, "and that the processing is
29 such in the large parts as to magnify the dose in
30 proportion through that processing, so that we see small
31 amounts, small proportions, in the live birds magnified
32 through the processing, to come out in relatively high
33 proportion in the actual finished product".
34
35 Can I take the second part of that first? Being fair to
36 you, what I take you to be saying is this: Though absent
37 conditions condusive to multiplication, the number of
38 actual bacteria does not increase, is, in fact, diluted.
39 What you get is an increase in the number, or may get, of
40 end products which may be contaminated?
41 A. That is, by and large, what I was trying to convey,
42 yes. I was somewhat clumsy in using words ------
43
44 Q. It is a difficult thing to express. But if you start with
45 a number X of bacteria, you put it with another piece of
46 meat, some of those may transfer to that other piece of
47 meat but, unless you have conditions for proliferation, you
48 do not get an actual increase in the number of bacteria,
49 which again is two bits of meat instead of one, each with a
50 smaller amount on each piece of meat?
51 A. Yes, you get this progressive dilution as it goes down.
52
53 Q. Progressive contamination and dilution as it goes through
54 the process, with the result that by the time you get to
55 the restaurant, unless there has been proliferation, you
56 have got relatively small amounts of the bacteria on the
57 finished product?
58 A. I think that is a fair summary.
59
60 Q. What I am concerned about, because I think I may not have
