Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 63


     
     1   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I thought that was probably so.
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  Thank you very much.  Now Salmonellosis itself.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Are you going to another tab?
     6
     7   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I am.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Have I been told what IEA, at the very front
    10        of chicken gait, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, on the very
    11        front of the cover?  What is IEA?
    12        A.  It is the Institute of Economic Affairs, my Lord.
    13
    14   Q.   I would like to know what it is, Mr. Rampton.  Is it a
    15        political body?
    16        A.  No.  It is strictly a-political.
    17
    18   Q.   It does not do research for any particular political
    19        party?
    20        A.  No, absolutely not.  It is a registered charity and it
    21        very rigidly adheres to being political, although its
    22        thinking tends to be right wing.  Its ideas are more
    23        closely associated with with Conservatives than other
    24        parties.
    25
    26   MR. RAMPTON:  Here, Mr. North, there was attack on the industry
    27        by the Conservative ----
    28        A.  Yes, very much so.
    29
    30   Q.   This book and your paper were written at least in part in
    31        defence of egg industry?
    32        A.  Indeed so.
    33
    34   Q.   In effect, what you were telling Mrs. Curry and others, I
    35        do not know if she was the principal villain, she may not
    36        have been?
    37        A.  Well, actually she was not.
    38
    39   Q.   It was because she went public.
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  She was trotting out the ----
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:  The party line.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  --- what she had been fed by the Ministry
    46        which she was ----
    47
    48   MR. RAMPTON:  By the wrong bureaucrats and MAFF.
    49        A.  That was not MAFF actually; it was the Department of
    50        Health. 
    51 
    52   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, it was the Department of Health. 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:  I have that wrong.  My memory is very short.  For
    55        all that, the sentiments, the factual statements, the
    56        expressions of opinion by you, whether through your own
    57        mouth or with Mrs. Gorman in these books, I take it we can
    58        take as being your honest, authentic statements of your own
    59        views at the time?
    60        A.  Yes, and you infer completely correctly that my natural

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