Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 32
1 week of their lives in an attempt to reduce infectious
2 diseases.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Now, is there a criticism of either of those
5 two things so far as cruelty is concerned?
6
7 MS. STEEL: Yes, the thing about antibiotics is in another
8 section of the leaflet. There is a criticism of the fact
9 that the whole reason there are so many infectious diseases
10 is because of the conditions which they are kept under.
11 Such massive numbers of birds all in close confinement
12 without any open air or individual attention is inevitably
13 going to lead to the spread of disease.
14
15 Moving on to the broiler sheds, 20 percent of the chickens
16 slaughtered at the Sun Valley plant are from company-owned
17 broiler houses and about 80 percent are from private
18 farmers who are on contract to Sun Valley. That was day
19 90, page 7, line 25, and that relates to the report that
20 Dr. Gregory made after he had visited a Sun Valley broiler
21 unit on 19th April 1993, which is referred to in his
22 statement, which is yellow 9, rearing and slaughter, tab
23 10. He said, when he was being examined in chief that --
24 unfortunately I am doing this from memory, because I did
25 forget the notes. I could not get the notes for Dr.
26 Gregory. I have not got them with me. He said something
27 to the effect that he was asked whether the conditions at
28 Sun Valley were satisfactory, and rather than answering the
29 question directly he compared it to the rest of the
30 industry.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Standards of the industry, 'the standard of
33 the industry' he said on more than one occasion, but he
34 said it in relation to this?
35
36 MS. STEEL: Yes. And he made various comments about the level
37 of lighting and the methods of feeding and the water
38 supply.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, I can forget the lighting, because he
41 clearly went on a day when the lighting had been turned up
42 for some other reason.
43
44 MS. STEEL: Yes. I was going to say, the whole point is that
45 he was only shown one unit and we would say, well, he
46 agreed it was a Sun Valley unit rather than a contract
47 supplier, and we would say that this was probably a better
48 -- it is better than average, but may be a model broiler
49 unit from the company's point of view, from Sun Valley's
50 point of view, and that conditions in that unit were much
51 better than a lot of the other units which were used to
52 rear the chickens that ultimately go into McDonald's
53 product.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What evidence do I have of that? You ask me
56 to draw the inference. I have got the witness you called
57 about ----
58
59 MS. STEEL: Mr. Bruton.
60
