Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 41


     
     1        On day 102, did I give the reference for that already?
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Not to what he accepted about Mr. Bruton.
     4        No.
     5
     6   MS. STEEL:   It is day 102, page 15, starts at line 1, the
     7        question starts at line 1.  On the same page, at line 49,
     8        Mr. Rampton asked about "leaving aside the effects of
     9        gumboro disease, for that period on average how many birds
    10        would be expected to be found dead in a shed of twenty or
    11        25,000 at the time of catching".  Dr. Patteson answered,
    12        "At the time of catching at the end of the flock the
    13        figure would be 30 or 40, and it could be as many as 50",
    14        which is the figure which is quoted here.
    15
    16        I cannot actually find the heat stress original part,
    17        talking about the levels of death from heat stress, but
    18        I have just got a note that Dr. Patteson did say that heat
    19        stress deaths were higher before the hot weather system was
    20        introduced in 1993.  And he said that on day 89, page 18,
    21        line 43.
    22
    23        Dr. Patteson said that currently -- or, well, it was
    24        currently when he was giving evidence, around ten percent
    25        of birds had hock burns to varying degrees.  That was on
    26        day 90, page 47, line 50.  He said that it used to be 20
    27        percent of birds, that is, one fifth of all birds reared by
    28        the company suffered from hock burns.  He gave evidence
    29        about -- and this is one of the points you were asking
    30        about earlier -- how much difference there was between the
    31        unit that Dr. Gregory inspected and the typical Sun Valley
    32        unit.  Dr. Patteson said that Sun Valley had tried out new
    33        cup drinkers about six or seven years ago and had been
    34        progressively replacing the old bell drinker's over the
    35        last five years.
    36
    37        That was day 90, page 38, line 48.  He said the main
    38        benefit is that it reduces spillage of water on to the
    39        environment/index.html">litter, which was a feature of the bell drinkers.  That was
    40        really highly undesirable because the maintenance of good
    41        environment/index.html">litter was of prime importance to the birds.  It was of
    42        prime importance to the birds to maintain dry and friable
    43        material for them to walk around on and lie in and the bell
    44        drinkers are the drinkers which are shown in the photograph
    45        which I took of the Sun Valley unit, and it is apparent
    46        from Dr. Patteson's evidence that at the time of the
    47        alleged libel the vast majority of the Sun Valley units
    48        were using those bell drinkers which had the highly
    49        undesirable feature, or the highly undesirable problem, of
    50        water spillage, which obviously leads to cat environment/index.html">litter which 
    51        leads to worse leg problems, hock burns and sores. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   When did you take your pictures, again, can
    54        you remind me?
    55
    56   MS. STEEL:   March 1991, I think it was.  It was definitely
    57        1991, Spring, but I think it was March.  Dr. Patteson also
    58        related on day 89, page 36, about how the food had been
    59        changed for the chickens which had resulted in improvements
    60        to the environment/index.html">litter, because he said that "there are certain raw

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