Day 104 - 15 Mar 95 - Page 31
1
2 Q. And there is a separate place for fat, it appears?
3 A. Yes.
4
5 Q. In all of that, what risk do you think is there, as
6 Ms. Hovi asserts, of airborne contamination of dressed
7 carcasses?
8 A. Strictly speaking, there is no risk of airborne
9 contamination.
10
11 Q. What about if you squirt the carcass with water to clean
12 it?
13 A. I would not wish to be pedantic, but water or spray is
14 not airborne.
15
16 Q. No, I quite accept that. Airborne contamination is one
17 thing; droplet contamination is another. They benefit from
18 air currents, I suppose?
19 A. Yes, but at this particular stage there are not
20 droplets, there is no washing going on.
21
22 Q. Where would we say that the dirty side of the business ends
23 and the clean side begins, looking at our plan?
24 A. In my view, whilst there is no statutory definition of
25 this ---
26
27 Q. I understand that.
28 A. -- it is -- I accepted that the dirty area ends when
29 the gut has been removed and, of course, the hide.
30
31 Q. Hide comes first then gut?
32 A. Yes.
33
34 Q. While you have got the plan out, I will ask you to deal
35 with two other of the allegations which Ms. Hovi makes.
36 These, I remind you, are supposed to be breaches of actual
37 regulations. She says: "There was a shortage of
38 facilities for disinfection of hand tools and knives
39 leading to contamination of the carcasses and meat". One
40 sees -- they may all be lies, of course -- numerous places
41 in this plan where there is hand wash and apron wash and
42 sterilization indicated. What I want to ask you is this:
43 First, do those sterilizing stations exist?
44 A. Yes, they do.
45
46 Q. Second are they used?
47 A. Yes, they are.
48
49 Q. Do they disinfect their hands, tools and knives?
50 A. Yes.
51
52 Q. How often do they do it in the course of a morning's work,
53 for example?
54 A. In the case of operations at the dirty end, that is,
55 the sticking of the beast and so on, virtually between
56 every carcass, and on the subsequent operations I could
57 describe it as frequent, perhaps every two minutes, every
58 three minutes. It is a continuous operation.
59
60 Q. Do they have backup knives? Do they stop to clean the
