Day 295 - 06 Nov 96 - Page 32
1 of products around the world with McDonald's, it seems a
2 bit of an irresponsible assumption, if that indeed is what
3 they did think at the time.
4
5 The admission which I read out earlier on about being
6 prosecuted for sewage in the food preparation area at
7 Southend. Yes, obviously, that is something that has
8 cropped up in at least two stores, Colchester and... I
9 cannot remember the other one. Two other stores. So it is
10 such an outrageous breach of basic hygiene by any standard
11 to continue producing food when there is sewage on the
12 floor that it does cast doubt on McDonald's commitment to
13 hygiene.
14
15 There is no doubt if one of their workers wanted to give
16 out a leaflet about joining a union to somebody it might
17 have been stopped immediately, which would have been top
18 priority, a sackable offence, no doubt. I think we had put
19 in our pleadings about Hackney environmental health
20 officers finding salmonella virus in the sewage outlets of
21 the local McDonald's. It was said when it came up in the
22 case, I cannot remember exactly when, that that does not
23 show anything, that is what you would expect obviously in
24 sewage. Obviously, that is just common sense, but you
25 don't continue preparing food when sewage is present.
26
27 One thing is that we did hear about there being a national
28 surveillance scheme for residues in meat, a MAFF scheme,
29 and I have not got the reference for it. But when we put
30 it to Mr. Chambers, I think he said that they had come out
31 positive, if you like, a couple of times, in that fairly
32 unregular... I can't remember, it was something like it
33 had been done once a month, or two or three years or
34 something, and they had come out positive twice with
35 Midland Meat Packers, which would show quite a substantial
36 indication of prevalence. I mean, 'positive' is not that
37 it exists, but it exists... No, I think it was, it exists,
38 they were found to contain pesticide residues, or something
39 like that.
40
41 Anyway, I think that Dr. North basically said how the
42 testing was totally inadequate again and yet it was still
43 found despite that. It may have been Dr. Long that was
44 talking; he was talking about testing for pigs, I know,
45 being totally inadequate.
46
47 That brings me on to my next point, really, almost my last
48 documentary point, which is we disclosed documents from the
49 US National Residue Programme 1993. I cannot remember who
50 we put these to now, and I cannot remember -- I think we
51 put them to Dr. North when he was in the witness box, but
52 the official national residue monitoring programme was
53 identifying pesticide residues in cattle and chicken in the
54 USA, and that was the major point. I think with Dr. Long
55 we also referred to the chart on the back of the MAVIS
56 veterinary document which was also talking about residues
57 and antibiotics being found, pesticide and antibiotic
58 residues being found, in, for example, pigs; that kind of
59 stuff.
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