Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 16
1 the modules, and then obviously take them back out and put
2 them on the lorry again.
3
4 He described the process of catching the birds on page 37,
5 line 45. When he was asked how the birds would be picked
6 up to be put into the drawers, he said some would be by the
7 legs, some would be by the wings, some would be by the back
8 of their necks. Generally speaking, they were picked up by
9 one leg. He said that usually six birds would be carried
10 in each hand. He did say it was not always six. Some
11 people would catch more; some people had smaller hands and
12 would catch less; some people had bigger hands and would
13 catch more. Once they were caught they were thrown into a
14 drawer.
15
16 He said, actually, that initially, when he started at the
17 company, they were not always thrown in the drawer, that
18 that had only started at the latter end of his time at
19 Sun Valley, because the catching teams had been cut and the
20 time that they had available to load the lorries was
21 shorter. Basically, the working pressure put on them was
22 to get the work carried out in as short a length of time as
23 possible. He did say - this is day 115, page 38, line
24 11: "When I started at Sun Valley I worked with five men
25 and the timings were different, we did not have so much
26 work load and the pressure was not so great to get this job
27 carried out as fast as you can. I would say that even at
28 the end of the job, even..."
29
30 Well, it is not a hundred percent clear how this is
31 written. It appears to be saying that even at that time
32 the job was to be carried out as fast as possible. Then he
33 says, "When you got less men to do the job, if there was
34 one man off you did not get anyone else to replace that
35 person" , and that however many there were in the team they
36 were still expected to catch the same amount of chickens in
37 the time given to load the lorry.
38
39 He also said on page 38, line 53, that if sick or injured
40 bird were flapping or running about they would all go in
41 the crate to the factory, and he said that on a number of
42 occasions you would see there were birds with broken legs
43 or wings or scabs on them and the farmers would say "This
44 is all part of our crop and it goes to the factory."
45 Obviously, we heard evidence when Miss Druce was in the
46 witness box that that is contrary to the Codes of
47 Practice. I think it may have been illegal, to transport
48 sick and injured birds.
49
50 Mr. Bruton went on to say that the only things that did not
51 get loaded into the crates were the dead birds or birds
52 that had been dead for days, whatever. Mr. Bruton referred
53 on page 39 of his evidence to the fact that birds' heads
54 would get trapped in the drawers from time to time, and he
55 said that that happened basically because they were loading
56 the sheds in semi-darkness and rushing about. You would
57 put the first two handfuls in the drawer and the last one
58 would just throw his in and close the drawer, and a chicken
59 might have had its head out and be looking around and that
60 the person who was shutting the drawer would not basically
