Day 295 - 06 Nov 96 - Page 21
1 cross-examined her fully and got absolutely nowhere
2 because, like the rest of our witnesses, they are all
3 telling the truth, and her expertise was clear. She
4 criticised the conditions in the abattoir that she had seen
5 firsthand, and McDonald's failed to, despite a continuous
6 kind of... what is the word... an ongoing problem with
7 this abattoir, who McDonald's were going to call, or who
8 they were not going to call. They could not really bring
9 anybody who could counter her direct experience.
10
11 Mr. Bennett noted that, as she had noted, substantial
12 amounts of the swab counts of contamination around the
13 abattoir showed the worst grade, and he said this indicated
14 that equipment at the abattoir was not properly cleaned.
15 Obviously, she felt that was a completely unacceptable
16 series of results. There is an opinion there which I have
17 referred to, which I have brought up before in this case,
18 at the bottom of that page, that procedures which
19 McDonald's have implemented may satisfy a court looking
20 into negligence that they have some kind of procedures to
21 monitor the situation in their abattoirs, or in their
22 process factory, but that that would not be relevant in a
23 case like this where we are talking about the effectiveness
24 of that monitoring to actually prevent a risk being present
25 in the food products when they arrive at the stores, when
26 there clearly is a risk.
27
28 I don't know if there is any more. Page 61, yes, this is
29 Keith Kenny, quality assurance supervisor for McDonald's,
30 also admitting under cross-examination that complaints
31 about undercooked food may be dealt with at the counter and
32 not reported to his department. I think there was a lot
33 more than that, but I have not had time to check the
34 transcripts myself.
35
36 Finally is the evidence of Mr. Jackson, brought in as an
37 expert for McDonald's in the case, and the third reference
38 on page 62. Admitted that "cross-contamination is
39 important and should be prevented. The more you can reduce
40 the risk earlier the less the risk later". I think that is
41 quite a significant admission, because McDonald's whole
42 supply chain effectively guarantees cross-contamination at
43 every stage of the procedure up to the kitchens in their
44 stores because of, obviously, as we have heard, the
45 production diseases in the cattle, the abattoir conditions,
46 and the storage in the abattoirs and the bulking of the raw
47 material in the processing factory, bulking together.
48 (Pause)
49
50 So, by that admission, we would say that is a very
51 fundamental admission made by their own expert about the
52 increase of risk that the McDonald's system is responsible
53 for. He also accepted, on the last page of these notes,
54 that meat products are usually the vehicle for food
55 poisoning, and accepted there may be unreported cases of
56 food poisoning, particularly E.Coli. That must be an
57 understatement of the century. Obviously, I have known
58 hundreds of people to get food poisoning, I do not think
59 anyone has ever often, mostly do not, identify the cause
60 and also, who do you report the cases to? People just do
