Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 18
1 at one point that Mr. Bruton was exaggerating, we did see
2 some company documents which revealed that the catchers
3 were instructed to carry up to 6 birds in one hand.
4 I cannot actually remember the reference for that, but if
5 you want me to look it up, I will find it. I do not know
6 whether you remember it anyway. (Pause) They are in
7 Sun Valley's own documents, anyway, if you want to check.
8 We did go through them in some detail with Dr. Pattison,
9 I think. I cannot actually remember where the reference
10 is.
11
12 Before we went through these documents, Dr. Pattison had in
13 fact earlier remarked that carrying ten birds using both
14 hands seemed rather excessive to him. He agreed that the
15 birds were carried by one leg. The birds were loaded 18 to
16 30 birds into a crate measuring approximately 3 foot by 2
17 foot by 10 inches. The references for that are 102, 13, 9
18 and 46, 56.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which day was that?
21
22 MS. STEEL: The second one?
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
25
26 MS. STEEL: 89, 46, 56. Basically the birds are crammed in as
27 tight as they can be packed with no concern for the welfare
28 of the birds. (Pause)
29
30 Just in relation to the catching procedure, Mr. Bruton gave
31 evidence that when he started working as a catcher for
32 Sun Valley he was not given any training in how to catch
33 the birds and put them in the crates. He said that
34 basically he went for the interview - this is day 115 and
35 it starts at the bottom of page 42 - if you got the job you
36 were told what time to start and then you started the job,
37 you met the team and you might say to the foreman "how do
38 you catch these chickens", and he might say "well, this is
39 the way that I catch it but everyone has their own
40 different ways and ideas of catching chickens". He said
41 there was no specific way shown by Sun Valley of how to
42 catch the chickens; everyone had their own way of
43 catching.
44
45 He did go on to say that when a supervisor came round
46 people would be more careful about how they were carrying
47 out the loading, but that even when the supervisor was
48 there, if things, as a result, got behind time, the
49 supervisor would be telling them to pull their finger out
50 and get a move on because it was creating problems down the
51 line.
52
53 And I asked him: When they asked you to hurry up, did they
54 ask you to be very careful. He said there was no mention
55 of carefulness, just get on and do the job as if it was
56 nobody here. I said: Do you think you had enough time to
57 consider the welfare of the birds, to which he replied,
58 no.
59
60 Obviously, if the catchers were given more time to carry
