Day 105 - 16 Mar 95 - Page 53
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You answer the question.
3 A. Not necessarily so. I have been critical of the
4 industry in my day and I have published articles to that
5 effect, but I would hesitate to be unduly critical of an
6 industry with which I have been associated for so many
7 years.
8
9 MR. MORRIS: If you cast your mind back to the swab documents,
10 without getting them out?
11 A. Yes.
12
13 Q. When we looked at the 500,000, it was above 500,000 samples
14 in lamb as it happened, there was also a million in the
15 beef; when would you start saying that meat was
16 unsatisfactory? Is a million about the point where you
17 start getting worried about the quality?
18 A. Could I say that sort of visual judgment of the quality
19 of meat is. In many respects, from a quality point of
20 view, more important than bacterial counts when the meat
21 began to smell or look dark or otherwise aesthetically
22 unacceptable. That is when I would consider it unfit. In
23 terms of health and disease, I would consider it unfit. If
24 I had a microbiological report telling me it was
25 contaminated with a pathogenic organism -----
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think what you are really being asked is if
28 there is a level of TVC or TCC at which on its own you
29 would say "no", what is that?
30 A. Yes, that would be 10 million because at that stage
31 physical signs of spoilage begin to appear. If I have a
32 piece of meat which looks all right, by that I mean it does
33 not smell, it is not slimy, it has a high bug count, let us
34 say 3 million per gramme, I would say that meat has to be
35 processed and eaten as quickly as possible. There is not
36 necessarily a health risk to it. We are discussing
37 quality, really. So, there is a relationship between the
38 microbiological counts and physical appearance, remembering
39 that Total Viable Count tells you nothing about the safety
40 of the meat.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: So McKey's figure or watershed for being
43 unsatisfactory, 10,000,000 which we have heard in court,
44 10,000,000, although Mr. Rampton does insist it is
45 5,000,000, but Mr. Walker said it is 10,000,000 ----
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is a matter of fact I have to decide.
48
49 MR. MORRIS: It is something between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000.
50
51 MR. RAMPTON: To resolve the problem ---
52
53 MR. MORRIS: It is an important question; I do not want
54 Mr. Rampton to intervene.
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: -- may we take McDonald's specification which is
57 10,000,000?
58
59 MR. MORRIS: No, I am talking about the McKey's specification
60 for acceptance -- whether it is either 5,000,000 or
