Day 069 - 19 Dec 94 - Page 16
1 taking legal action against Tyson Foods.
2
3 Do you know whether he did or he did not?
4 A. I do not know.
5
6 Q. You do not know. We notice over the page that Dr. Farwell
7 of the epidemiology branch said that an epidemiology number
8 would not be needed.
9
10 Can we turn over to number 7, page 12? These are breaded
11 chicken breast patties from Schwan's Fine Foods, supplied
12 by Tyson Foods of Rogers, Arkansas. Is that a McDonald's
13 plant?
14 A. No, it is not.
15
16 Q. The complainant was Shirley King who said that she became
17 ill after consumption of two of these breaded chicken
18 breast patties. In each case, according to her account, she
19 had vomiting, nausea and diarrhoea within half an hour of
20 eating the product.
21
22 Do you know enough about human physiology and pathology of
23 food-borne illness to know whether it is likely that she
24 became ill as quickly as that after eating a chicken?
25 A. Yes, I do know, and that is not common, and that does
26 not happen. It takes at least six hours to 72 hours to
27 show incidents of food-borne illnesses. The bacteria has
28 an incubation period. What happens is very often they eat
29 something before that time, prior to the 72 hours, and the
30 stomach reaches a point in which it cannot take any more
31 foods. So it is common and, in this case, it seems that
32 when they ate that food that is what happened exactly; the
33 stomach could not handle it any more, and they vomited
34 within half an hour because it could not digest that food.
35
36 Q. Do you happen to know whether any further action was taken
37 in that case?
38 A. No, I do not. It is not one of our plants.
39
40 Q. It is not one of yours, certainly. The eighth document,
41 page 14, concerns somebody called Jane Cavanagh who bought
42 some fried chicken leg quarters from Howard County,
43 supplied by Howard County. They had been made by Tysons,
44 Nashville, Arkansas, which is a McDonald's plant, as you
45 told us.
46
47 The chicken leg quarters, it is said, were frozen when
48 purchased.
49
50 "Consumer thawed product in refrigerator. Product had very
51 bad smell. On 8th July 1993, SCO Forth contacted consumer
52 and observed entire 5lb package of product. Product
53 appeared old, badly bruised and had an off condition
54 smell. There were no code dates on the package. There was
55 the official mark of poultry inspection with no
56 establishment number either in a circle or anywhere else on
57 the package. On 8th July SCO Forth contacted Mr. Jesse
58 Cobos, a market manager Minyard Food Store, who advised he
59 had not received any other complaints, but he was surprised
60 because the chicken looked so bad. No further action was
