Day 094 - 01 Mar 95 - Page 65
1 A. Sorry?
2
3 Q. Would that be thrown away after their tests?
4 A. The meat?
5
6 Q. Yes.
7 A. That has been tested.
8
9 Q. Yes.
10 A. Yes.
11
12 Q. It must be carcasses then?
13 A. No.
14
15 Q. Or samples?
16 A. No. It is a combination. The test, some of the tests
17 when you look for pesticides or herbicides are done on
18 organ meats, could be liver, pancreas. There are some
19 other tests that are being conducted on the meat itself, so
20 it will change.
21
22 Q. So they take samples from 3 per cent of the meat?
23 A. That is correct.
24
25 Q. When you were giving evidence in-chief you said that you
26 had worked with the USDA resulting in changes for
27 regulations for cooking temperature of beef.
28 A. That is correct.
29
30 Q. When was that?
31 A. About a year and a half to two years ago.
32
33 Q. Why were you working on those regulations?
34 A. Because when it comes to -- let me start again. We are
35 the most recognised restaurant in the world. We are
36 constantly, we have people constantly trying to duplicate
37 what we do, spying on us, trying to find out what we do.
38 We are very reluctant to share our technology when it comes
39 to productive and efficiency of management of operations.
40 We are very open when it comes to food safety. When it
41 comes to food safety we share every single piece of
42 information we have. When the jack-in-the-box incident
43 happened it not only affected their business, it affected
44 our businesses. When people start dying from eating
45 hamburgers we have a concern. When we know that the
46 regulations at those times were to cook the hamburgers to a
47 level in which we knew through our research it would not
48 kill the bacteria, we felt a responsibility, more
49 responsibility to share that information and push the USDA
50 to increase the regulation to increasing cooking
51 temperature. We did that.
52
53 Q. What was the level previously then?
54 A. It was 145 degrees F.
55
56 Q. For how long?
57 A. It does not specify a time at that time.
58
59 Q. What is the regulation now then?
60 A. It is 155 degrees for 15 seconds.
