Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 25


     
     1   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  We will take our five minutes now.
     2
     3                         (Short Adjournment)
     4
     5   MR. MORRIS:  Moving on to chicken vats, from your statement:
     6        "The vats used to cook the chicken nuggets and patties
     7        were extremely unreliable, often tripping out, giving no
     8        immediate or obvious indication that they had done so.
     9        This sometimes meant undercooked chicken was served before
    10        anyone was able to notice the problem.  The problem was
    11        sometimes only noticed when a customer brought back raw
    12        food.  Complaints about chicken were usually dealt with in
    13        the same way as complaints about raw beef, due to the
    14        pressure of work."
    15        A.  Can I stop there and say that in the statements other
    16        people have given, they have said the RCD system, but I was
    17        not -- the RCD tripping out would show, the whole thing
    18        would turn you off; and I agree with that.  But what I am
    19        saying here is there was a specific vat that was used to
    20        cook the chicken patties and the chicken nuggets.  This one
    21        particular vat, the gas did not ignite on it properly
    22        occasionally, and all that would come on is a tiny little
    23        light at the bottom of the vat, saying trouble, but the
    24        timer would still be on and the chicken would still look
    25        cooked initially, for the first few runs, because the oil
    26        would still be hot; and the timer, the timer used to
    27        automatically adjust the time, according to the
    28        temperature, so it would leave the chicken in longer, it
    29        would leave the chicken in the vat longer to make up for
    30        the lower temperature; but after a couple of runs, it
    31        cannot possibly recover temperature, because there is no
    32        heating coming in, so the chicken is going to come out
    33        raw.  If one person is doing fillet and pie -- which is
    34        what the chicken station is called -- and that was normally
    35        the case, except on Saturday, it would be -- this one
    36        person would have to do chicken nuggets, chicken
    37        sandwiches, all the pies, all the fillet, and stock their
    38        area up and keep it clean.  So they were very busy in
    39        fillet and pie; it was recognised as a very difficult
    40        station to do.  So one tiny little light, it was missed on
    41        several occasions.
    42
    43        This tiny light, you just did not -- you know, it was a
    44        little thing saying trouble at the bottom of the grill, at
    45        the bottom of the vat, and there were lots of other lights
    46        there as well, and, unless you knew what you were looking
    47        for, you would not notice it.
    48
    49        I became -- I used to manage the kitchen a lot, and
    50        I became very aware of it, and I was always looking out for 
    51        it.  But I could never spend my whole time looking out to 
    52        see whether the trouble light had come on or not.  I used 
    53        to try and make crew members aware of it.  You would
    54        forget.  That could be my fault, perhaps.  But people did
    55        not look at it and did not notice.  Some of them did not
    56        even know what it meant, that the trouble light was on,
    57        because everything looked like it was going fine.
    58
    59        But it was not the RCD system there.  If the RCD on the
    60        chicken tripped, the whole station went out, everything

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