Day 104 - 15 Mar 95 - Page 33
1 plan open. Miss Hovi says: "There was no separate,
2 chilled detention room for condemned or detained
3 carcasses. This leads often to a situation where detained
4 carcasses were kept in the same chillers with carcasses
5 that had passed the inspection. This practice easily leads
6 to either contact or airborne contamination." What comment
7 do you have about that, assuming one understands what she
8 is saying?
9 A. At the time Miss Hovi was present on the site there
10 was, in fact, a separate condemned room which is the dirty
11 end, as you have already seen, that is, meat which is
12 passing in one direction out of the premises. There was a
13 separate detained room.
14
15 Q. Is what we see on the plan accurate then?
16 A. Yes.
17
18 Q. There seems to be branch like to each of those rooms?
19 A. Yes.
20
21 Q. I think you told us that at the time when she was there the
22 detained room was not itself chilled; is that right?
23 A. That is right.
24
25 Q. And that it became chilled in June 1990?
26 A. Yes, it did and it is now chilled.
27
28 Q. Is that according to a recommendation of yours or not?
29 A. No, that would be part of discussions with the Ministry
30 to improve and upgrade as on ongoing process in the light
31 of recent legislation.
32
33 Q. Then if we look at the right-hand side of plan we see a man
34 with carcass washers vertically behind his back. Do you
35 see that?
36 A. Yes, I do.
37
38 Q. Miss Hovi says: The carcasses were washed with high
39 pressure water". Is that accurate or not before the
40 inspection?
41 A. It is not "high" in the sense of a commercial cleaning
42 jet; it is high compared with tight water pressure, so if
43 150 pounds per square inch, using old fashioned language,
44 is high, well it is high because it needs to be that
45 pressure.
46
47 Q. Give us laymen an idea. One knows with a garden hose if
48 one squeezes the end, one gets a fiercer jet than if one
49 just lets it squash out?
50 A. Yes.
51
52 Q. Is it much fiercer than the squashed end?
53 A. A good deal fiercer than that.
54
55 Q. She says: "This practice is dangerous as it can lead to the
56 inspectors missing pathological changes". Do you have any
57 reason to accept that or not?
58 A. No. In the absence any examples given by Miss Hovi,
59 I cannot comment.
60
