Day 105 - 16 Mar 95 - Page 28
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You will have to address your comment to me.
2 You will want me to bear that in mind. It may be
3 Mr. Rampton will say at the end of the day it is the
4 quality of the meat which counts, and I will listen to all
5 the arguments.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I would only say that, that if the
8 Defendants have had these documents since the end of
9 January, they have had plenty of time to show them to
10 Mr. North, for example.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Mr. North may well say something about it.
13 If you have a positive case to put ---
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: That is what I am suggesting.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- put it now to this witness so that we can
18 see what it is.
19
20 MS. STEEL: I think it has been put. The point is that the
21 grading system seems to be "A" to "E". There are several
22 Es and these are continually repeated.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If, for instance, Mr. North is going to come
25 along and say: "E is naughty", put that and why. But I am
26 merely giving you the opportunity to put a positive case,
27 if you have one, on the instructions or information from
28 any of your witnesses.
29
30 MR. MORRIS: I put to you that the lowest grade from the Bristol
31 Food Laboratories must be "unsatisfactory".
32 A. I disagree with that entirely.
33
34 Q. And that the contamination of the fixed equipment, I am
35 talking about surfaces?
36 A. Yes.
37
38 Q. Cutting blocks, trimtables, is inevitably going to increase
39 the risk of cross-contamination on to the meat?
40 A. No. You will always get a microbiological load on a
41 cutting table.
42
43 Q. Yes, therefore there is a risk?
44 A. Even at "E" grade, it is not outside the bounds of
45 acceptability in terms of health.
46
47 Q. Yes, but people are not eating it, are they, three minutes
48 later? The point is, it is increasing the bacterial load
49 in the process?
50 A. We must then refer to the bacterial loads on the meat,
51 and I must refer you to 27th June, for example, on page
52 75. I notice here that there is a lamb flank, which has
53 nothing to do with McDonald's, but I notice that is greater
54 than 500,000. Could we just look at that? It is an
55 important illustration, I believe, that is greater than
56 500,000 organisms a gramme.
57
58 Q. Yes.
59 A. Now, that is, if we were to relate that to a typical
60 customer specification for microbiological counts, that
