Day 096 - 03 Mar 95 - Page 58
1 A. I cannot be held to time on that. I know that is a
2 system that was tried and did not work very well.
3
4 Q. Your company did not have any policy about those cages
5 particularly, I do not mean in your own place but in
6 general in terms of suppliers you have just got the normal
7 conditions in the industry?
8 A. In the 70 and 80s, but definitely now in the last 10
9 years we have had a policy not to have anything to do with
10 those.
11
12 Q. So your suppliers would have had to start phasing them out
13 somewhere in the middle 80s?
14 A. It was not our wish to keep pigs like that, yes.
15
16 Q. Any longer?
17 A. Yes.
18
19 MS. STEEL: Carry on.
20
21 (The video recording continued).
22
23 MS. STEEL: Can we pause? Does your company use -- well has it
24 used medication in the feed?
25 A. Yes, I said earlier that we used medication such as
26 penicillin, etc., for various problems that might arise.
27
28 Q. For background infections?
29 A. When one talks about background infection, we will on
30 our veterinarian visit if they think that there is a
31 preventative necessity, it will be used at times. There
32 are times when you can have an outbreak of a problem in a
33 piggery and you might consider it necessary to use
34 preventative medicine in the next piggery on one of our
35 units. It is a question -- I will try to give a simple
36 example of flu flying about.
37
38 MS. STEEL: Just carry on.
39
40 (The video recording continued).
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Could you stop it there, please? The growth
43 promoting drugs they were talking, including antibiotics
44 and other ones, are they the ones that you would use?
45 Would they all be from this prescribed list the other
46 farmers was talking about?
47 A. We will not use any drug promoting antibiotics
48 whatsoever. That is written in our specification. That is
49 written in the Freedom Food RSPCA specification. It is
50 written in our retailer specification. Growth promoters we
51 do not use.
52
53 MS. STEEL: Is that something that has come in with the Freedom
54 Food system?
55 A. No, no, no. It is a European -- clenbeuterol is banned
56 in Europe and we as a company chose to take that route with
57 our pigs as well in having no growth promoters.
58
59 Q. When was that banned then? You banned them at the same
60 time as it became a European -----
