Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 16
1 residues in the actual food products.
2
3 Now, moving on from Dr. North to John Atherton. To
4 McDonald's approach to food safety, starting off with John
5 Atherton. He admitted that McDonald's receives between
6 1,500 and 2,750 customer complaints of food poisoning a
7 year, may be more than that, and in fact-----
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Was that UK?
10
11 MR. MORRIS: Yes, and this would be purely what, as far as I
12 remember, they would get at head office in terms of formal
13 forms from the store, and, as we have heard, all the way
14 under-pinned with McDonald's claims about systems. We must
15 remember the evidence of our witnesses, especially on this
16 issue, as to the lack of... that procedures basically get
17 thrown out of the window when the necessity of having to
18 serve the customers as quick as possible takes precedence.
19 We would certainly say the example of Mike Logan saying
20 "There were regular complaints, which when it came down to
21 it, although we were promised incident report forms, we
22 only got three from that store." That was the Bath store.
23
24 Although I think, and I am not going to go into individual
25 people's evidence in depth, I just have not had time, that
26 would be an illustration of how we were led to believe we
27 would get about 50 incident report forms from Bath and it
28 turned out there were only three, and we believe the
29 evidence demonstrates that incident report forms are almost
30 never filled out in McDonald's stores. That when people
31 complained about undercooked food, for example, they may be
32 given another burger; that if people bring a product back
33 there is no guarantee anything will happen apart from being
34 chucked in the bin, whatever, and that incident report
35 forms are just very rarely filled out. So the likelihood
36 of customer complaints are anything between 10 times and 50
37 times as many in terms of relevant complaints to
38 undercooking of food and food poisoning.
39
40 He said the company also received complaints of foreign
41 bodies in food sold, that was mainly chicken and bits of
42 plastic. Mr. Walker estimated 800 complaints a year
43 regarding hamburgers, mostly concerning bits of plastic, so
44 -----
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is the relevance of that save insofar
47 as there may be any evidence, and I am not sure there was,
48 that it actually injures the health of-----
49
50 MR. MORRIS: I just think that it shows that-----
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Cooked mice in burgers and worms is all a
53 bit of fun to hear about, what actual relevance does it
54 have to any issue in the case?
55
56 MR. MORRIS: I think the relevance is to show whether their
57 systems are foolproof and -----
58
59 MS. STEEL: And how hygienic they are?
60
