Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 34
1 response and that worked out at 0.7 percent.
2
3 MS. STEEL: Yes, possibly.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That bird had a dry head so evidently it had
6 missed the stunner rather than being inadequately stunned
7 by the stunner and was, or would have been, still conscious
8 when it had its neck cut.
9
10 MS. STEEL: So he has basically done two separate experiments?
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It looks to me as if it is 0.7 percent being
13 the proportion of one bird to the ones which he observed.
14 But it surely does not make any difference from your point
15 of view, because you say there are so many birds going
16 through that it is still a large number.
17
18 MS. STEEL: Yes. No, but there is a reference to one percent
19 of the birds were thought to have missed the water of the
20 water bath stunner.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, the one percent, I think you will find,
23 were the ones where he concluded that one percent of the
24 birds had residual brain stem activity and were not
25 clinically dead.
26
27 MS. STEEL: It is a separate point. It is in page 7, it is the
28 paragraph right above the '0.7 percent of the birds'. The
29 five lines up from the bottom of that paragraph, 'one
30 percent of the birds were thought to have missed the water
31 of the water bath stunner'.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I don't think that is what his evidence was,
34 you see. But it surely does not make any difference. Why
35 spend more than ten seconds on it if it is still going to
36 be hundredths or thousandths of birds?
37
38 MS. STEEL: He did give evidence about it, it is in evidence on
39 day 20, page 30, line 18. I asked him about the one
40 percent of birds that were missing the water bath stunner
41 and hence were not stunned. I said, "Is it not something,
42 you think is humane?" and he said, "I would not recommend
43 it, no."
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The one percent occasion was on an occasion
46 other than 19th April?
47
48 MS. STEEL: Was it?
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, according to my note. It just shows,
51 again, that is a demonstration why one ought not to bother
52 with the difference between one percent and 0.7 percent,
53 because if you go on another occasion it might be 1.5, on
54 another occasion, 0.4, on another occasion it will be two
55 percent, because the reasons they miss the stunning bath
56 are not necessarily going to be reproduced day after day.
57 All you need is so many birds in a thousand fluttering on
58 one afternoon and a different number out of a thousand
59 fluttering on the next.
60
