Day 295 - 06 Nov 96 - Page 31


     
     1        but it seems like John Atherton was saying it was something
     2        around 2,000 customer complaints per year of foreign
     3        bodies.  Mr. Walker estimated 800 complaints regarding
     4        hamburgers.  Mr. Atherton stated it was slightly more for
     5        chicken, mostly concerning pieces of bone, so this is one
     6        area of complaint, the foreign bodies area.
     7        Then you have the food poisoning complaints as well.
     8
     9        Mr. Atherton explained on day 85, page 28, line 50, that
    10        one reason the company has a policy of cleaning out its
    11        shake mix machines daily is that the appearance of maggots
    12        is the result if you do not.  That may be a small speck of
    13        detail in this overall case, but it is something that two
    14        or three of our employment witnesses brought up.  Lest it
    15        be thought they were making something up, there we have
    16        admission that that is the result if you don't clean out
    17        your shake mix daily.  In America, as we have heard, in
    18        many States they do not clean it out daily.
    19
    20        I think I managed to get the Atherton complaints
    21        references.  I think I have just given them, but I have
    22        pages 40 to 44 on day 84, regarding customer complaints.
    23
    24        The other thing about Mr. Atherton I wanted to flag up was
    25        pages 50 to 62.  It also deals with...  Sorry, I think it
    26        is day 88.  It is the one that was mis-labelled 87 on the
    27        transcript.  No, actually it was day 86, I think, but it
    28        was labelled 87 on the top of each page.  It should be day
    29        86, pages 50 through to 62.  It starts off with the
    30        hazards, talking about cooking temperatures and the hazards
    31        of varying temperatures on the grill, and he recognised
    32        that this was a problem but that he could not remember a
    33        single memo that had been sent out warning about that
    34        problem.  It was said, "If such a memo had been sent out?"
    35        He answered, "Yes, I would have seen it.  Whether I would
    36        have remembered it three or four years later is another
    37        matter."  So if that could be read as well.
    38
    39        It also goes into the food poisoning complaints, which he
    40        said on page 51.  "It may be three, four or five a year per
    41        store.  It may be more than that", he says.  "All of them
    42        are fully investigated", he said.  Well, he did not really
    43        -- his evidence did not tally with Mr. Kenny's.  That was
    44        not strictly his department, so he was assuming it was
    45        being properly investigated, I think.
    46
    47        One matter which I have not raised at all would be the
    48        hygiene problems in, I think it was, the Tyson's plant in
    49        the USA.  If you remember, we had the Food Safety
    50        Inspection Service inspection reports, which showed a
    51        number of serious defects in the hygiene procedures and
    52        deficiencies, which we had received directly from the Food
    53        Safety Inspection Service.  That is what it is called.
    54
    55        Another few points that have not been mentioned.  In or
    56        around 1986 legal action was taken against McDonald's in
    57        France for using banned colourants in their milkshakes, of
    58        which they say they assumed they were legal because they
    59        had imported them from another country, which does not
    60        really show much confidence.  As there is so much movement

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