Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 17
1 click that the chicken had its head out of the drawer
2 because they were rushing around trying to load the
3 chickens far too fast.
4
5 He did say, because we heard some evidence from
6 Mr. Pattison, that they tried to stop the chickens' heads
7 being shut in the drawers. Mr. Bruton said, when I asked
8 him about whether or not any of the supervisors or company
9 officials had said anything about the heads getting
10 trapped, that sometimes they did come and say that the
11 heads had been trapped and the catchers would say that they
12 knew it was a problem, and that they said to the
13 supervisors, 'If you gave us more time to do the work we
14 could carry it out in a better and safer order' and that
15 the problem would not happen.
16
17 Basically, they were never given more time to do it.
18 Despite the fact that the company was complaining about
19 their heads getting shut in the drawers, they were not
20 prepared to provide the workers with the necessary amount
21 of time to prevent it happening.
22
23 With reference to this point, Dr. Gregory, you may
24 remember, carried out a study on 'dead on arrivals' at
25 slaughter plants, which included the Sun Valley slaughter
26 plant, and referring to the study of the injuries inflicted
27 on birds during the catching and loading, Dr. Gregory
28 stated, "It is not humane for those birds to get obvious
29 damage like this. I think it is highly likely that those
30 birds experience pain, if not a profound sense of shock.
31 So I think one can safely say it is definitely inhumane for
32 those." That was on day 19, page 61, line 16. He also
33 said that the level of 'dead on arrivals' was not the end
34 of the story, because other birds would have suffered
35 injuries. That was on the same page at line 6.
36
37 Dr. Gregory, in fact, stated that he had made criticisms of
38 the design of the transport module crates, suggesting
39 that... I think it was that there could be a lip on them,
40 or something, or that the lip should be modified so that
41 the heads would not get shut in the drawers if the crates
42 were shut. He said that he had referred his criticisms of
43 the transport modules to the manufacturers and designers of
44 the module system. The reference for that is day 18, page
45 20, line 2. And basically nothing had come of it.
46
47 We would say that both the fact that Sun Valley were not
48 prepared to give the catchers more time to catch the birds
49 in a more humane manner and that they were not doing
50 anything about getting a new module system which took
51 Dr. Gregory's criticisms into account, shows that they
52 basically have got a callous disregard for the welfare of
53 the birds, they were prepared to let the suffering go on
54 rather than increase their costs by introducing new methods
55 or employing more people. Obviously increasing their costs
56 would decrease their profits. So it is all down to profit
57 again.
58
59 As well as the evidence from Mr. Bruton about the number of
60 birds carried in one hand, because I think it was suggested
