Day 091 - 17 Feb 95 - Page 41


     
     1        food chain" and the answer is, "Yes".
     2
     3        I do not really understand, to be honest, why that is not
     4        enough?
     5
     6   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It may be enough but at the moment you are
     7        accepting that there was a concern, but that the risk to
     8        human health was very minimal.
     9
    10   MS. STEEL:  Not really because -----
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It may be at the end of the day that you say
    13        that is sufficient for your purposes.  That is the
    14        combination of the answer he gave earlier and the answer he
    15        gave just a moment ago is that you say he has accepted
    16        that, in some countries anyway, there was a concern about
    17        carcinogenesis.
    18
    19   MS. STEEL:  No, sorry, he has accepted that that it is the
    20        reason that it is carcinogenic and then he has gone on to
    21        accept  -----
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, it is not.  That is not my understanding.
    24          He said there was a concern about it being carcinogenic
    25        in people who worked in feed mills.  That, in itself,
    26        removes it from people who have eaten the flesh of animals
    27        who have been treated with the antibiotic because, for all
    28        I know, the mechanism is entirely different.  Look back
    29        over Case View, if you want, but do not assume that the
    30        witness has accepted that if you ate meat with a trace of
    31        this drug in it there would be a risk of getting cancer.
    32
    33   MS. STEEL:  I do not think that the witness has said that.  The
    34        witness has said that it is carcinogenic, though, and
    35        accepted that the reason that those countries banned it was
    36        because of concerns in the food chain.
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let me go back to the beginning of page 35.
    39        The question at 34 line 44: "This drug is strongly linked
    40        with cancer, is it not? We have been through all this in
    41        another context. To use the word "link", you were arguing
    42        that it not necessarily mean that it caused and if
    43        something is carcinogenic it is a cause of cancer.  That is
    44        what the Greek words mean.  The answer was: "The
    45        recommendation from the Veterinary Medicine Directorate
    46        came out, I do not know, 9 or 12 months ago, but some
    47        concerns had been expressed on the use of the drug from a
    48        health and safety point of view for the mill workers in the
    49        feed mill handling the compound so it was recommended that
    50        the product be used wearing the correct safety protection 
    51        equipment at the same time and a large number of 
    52        supermarket customers of ours heard there might be any 
    53        concerns whatsoever.  There was a general feeling that the
    54        product should not be used and so for that reason the
    55        product is not used very much now in the poultry industry.
    56        We certainly stopped using it in the spring of next year."
    57
    58        Then you went on to bans in the USA followed by Australia,
    59        Canada, I think it was, and Germany.
    60

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