Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 19
1
2 MR. MORRIS: His expert recommendation was the minimum,
3 internal cooking temperature should be 73 degrees
4 Centigrade. That was his expert opinion, and that is
5 backed up by the chart. That is in the previous large
6 paragraph on that page, and that, we would say, is backed
7 up by the official recent report for the government, by
8 the... whatever it was called, the Virotoxic Committee.
9 Therefore, we would say-----
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: He did not... He said he went to 73
12 degrees. He did not go quite in those terms. He pointed
13 out that the temperatures were all over 70 degrees, albeit
14 perhaps a fraction over 70 degrees, but that by the time
15 the temperature had been taken there was a time lapse from
16 the point of cooking. My advice is not to get bogged down
17 in the evidence of a witness who has not been called by
18 either party. You can accept it or not but, although you
19 can pick points from Mr. Clarke's statement, if I am to
20 take it into account it is overwhelmingly in favour of
21 McDonald's on this issue. If he had been called there
22 might have been questions you would have asked him to
23 challenge his end conclusions, but there is no doubt those
24 were his end conclusions if one reads the report fairly
25 from an independent point of view.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: On this specific matter, again, we would say that
28 Dr. North and ^^^ Maya Hoffe both recognised the authority
29 and common sense of the recommendations in the report for
30 the government.
31
32 MR. RAMPTON: I have to -----
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34 MR. MORRIS: The E.Coli report, which we will rely on.
35
36 MR. RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord, to intervene, which I really
37 have to. This is about the fourth opportunity I have had
38 and it is the first that I have taken. Mr. Morris has
39 several times mentioned in connection with Dr. North's
40 evidence, amongst other occasions, this report by the
41 government. Your Lordship will remember that an attempt
42 was made to do that when Mr. North came back on the second
43 occasion and your Lordship specifically ruled that he could
44 not give that evidence because we had had no notice of it.
45
46 MR. MORRIS: Well, the evidence was given and extracts of the
47 report were read out and the witness commented on them.
48 And so, as far as we got before we may have been stopped,
49 whatever, I cannot remember now, but we rely on all the
50 evidence that has come from that report that we referred
51 to.
52
53 So then moving on to McDonald's on this subject, in their
54 operations manual set a minimum internal temperature to be
55 reached of 64 degrees Centigrade Celsius for a cooked
56 burger. So in the '80s in the USA, I cannot remember
57 exactly when it was, but it continued into the 1990s, they
58 were well below anybody's recommended cooking time,
59 including their own current UK recommending cooking
60 temperature.
