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
