Day 106 - 23 Mar 95 - Page 47


     
     1        is going through the system, and there is not always a
     2        direct correlation between the visible signs and the actual
     3        quality of the product coming through.
     4
     5        Now, we followed the progress of the meat coming into the
     6        delivery bay.  It comes in what I have learned to call
     7        combo bins, what I understand are called by some staff
     8        "compost bins", which is not altogether inaccurate because
     9        what they do is they have these very large square bins in
    10        which meat is packed, squashed together, and you have the
    11        produce of many, many animals all confined together in one
    12        pack repeated many, many times.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  They are actually the same shape as some
    15        makes of compost which you can make buy at your local
    16        garden centre, so it might not have been any reference to
    17        the food, might it?
    18        A.  Well, it is possible -----
    19
    20   Q.   You know the kind I mean where the panels slot into each
    21        other?
    22        A.  Yes.  Both in terms of visible description and function
    23        because, if you wanted to compost the stuff that is
    24        certainly how would you do it.  It is not, in my view, by
    25        any means the ideal way to transport meat.  The tradition,
    26        of course, in carrying meat as carcasses is to have them
    27        hung and have free air circulation.  That way you keep the
    28        meat dry, you keep it well ventilated and thus keep it dry
    29        and also keep it separate.
    30
    31        To squash it altogether into one mass means that whatever
    32        contamination level has been on any one part is then
    33        shared, or the risk of sharing, with all the other bits.
    34        It also means in part you are creating conditions with
    35        anaerobic conditions, conditions without air, which foster
    36        certain types of spoilage organisms.  It means you are
    37        wholly reliant on just one safeguard as opposed to a
    38        variety of safeguards, i.e. that temperature control to
    39        stop the stuff spoiling.
    40
    41        But it does mean, inevitably, that you are increasing
    42        opportunities for cross-contamination.  It also means that,
    43        in terms of public health, where in the event of an
    44        outbreak where you desperately need to track back through
    45        the system desirably in many cases to find the farms and
    46        individual animals, that this amorphous batch has really
    47        lost any identity.  I would find it hard to believe you
    48        could take any one piece of meat out and give any reliable
    49        guide as to where it came from.  So, it has lost its
    50        identity by bulking up, and it is bulked up in such a way 
    51        as to share contamination. 
    52 
    53        That said, of course, process is then amplified as it goes
    54        through into the hoppers and is mixed up altogether into
    55        the burger production; a mechanism, of course, for sharing
    56        contamination, at the same time building into the body of
    57        the product with the inherent problems of now no longer is
    58        it a surface phenomenon, but now any contamination is
    59        distributed uniformally throughout the whole substance of
    60        the product.

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