Day 099 - 08 Mar 95 - Page 82


     
     1        that they know what the raw material counts are that are
     2        going into the chain, so they know at the end of the day
     3        product should never exceed the McDonald's specification.
     4        What Mr. Walker may have said was that if they exceeded
     5        what he calls "unsatisfactory count" of 5,000,000, that
     6        would not necessarily prevent them from processing that
     7        into a burger because at the end of the day there is still
     8        an extremely good chance that that product would not exceed
     9        the McDonald's specification.
    10
    11   MR. MORRIS:  You said you did not know one example where you
    12        have actually rejected any patties?
    13        A.  Yes, because of the checks they put in further down the
    14        chain.  They prevent that.  The whole point of the quality
    15        assurance programme is not that you test the end product
    16        and then if it is no good you chuck it away.  You put a
    17        series of checks through the system to ensure that the
    18        product you produce at the end meets the specification that
    19        you are after.  That is what quality assurance is.
    20
    21   Q.   We will see.
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  For your information, only because it is your
    24        evidence I am interested in rather than argument, one way
    25        or the other the reason that Mr. Morris put the question he
    26        did is that whatever appears in the microbiological
    27        standards in his actual witness statement, Mr. Walker
    28        referred to "unsatisfactory" meaning more than 10 million
    29        grammes when sent for bacteriological analysis when the
    30        meat arrived at his plant.  Do you understand?
    31        A.  Yes.
    32
    33   Q.   That is merely to explain what all this has been.  He stuck
    34        to the 10 million at least to an extent in his evidence.
    35        A.  It should have read 5,000,000 in my opinion.
    36
    37   Q.   That is what you say, yes.
    38
    39   MR. MORRIS:  Would that be a good time to finish for today?
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, can I say one more word about the McKey
    44        documents?  We have a bit further information now.  We will
    45        restrict it to your Lordship and the Defendants now, the
    46        edited version of this list.  Of course this list is not a
    47        document in the strict sense; it is a summary made by
    48        McKey's for the purposes of the case, so in a sense it is
    49        evidence rather than secondary evidence of that, but rather
    50        than an original contemporaneous document.  The position is 
    51        this, that for every one of those 162 tests there are 
    52        between five and 10 sheets of paper in existence, that is 
    53        for the one day, making a total of something over 1200
    54        sheets of paper.  There is no way of telling which sheets,
    55        which few sheets it was that Professor Jackson saw on 12th
    56        January last year.  What we are proposing is to ask McKey's
    57        to send us the five, 10 or 15 sheets that relate to Midland
    58        Meat Packers for that day.  We will then produce those in
    59        addition to this list.  Then your Lordship will decide
    60        whether or not that is acceptable.

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