Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 76


     
     1        to create a system of what some witnesses have called
     2        "positive release"; what you are trying to do is to create
     3        a system, recognising that you can never be 100 per cent
     4        germ free, bug free, you are trying to create a system
     5        which reduces that bug burden to a minimum, are you not?
     6        That is what are trying to with your HACCP system in this
     7        field?
     8        A.  No, not even necessarily.  You are trying to keep it
     9        within tolerable limits, of a tolerable limit, you might
    10        say.
    11
    12   Q.   Let me say acceptable minimum or an acceptable level, if
    13        you like?
    14        A.  There is no point in reducing bug levels just for the
    15        sake of it unless they have any significance.
    16
    17   Q.   That is why you have specifications which say:  "OK, well,
    18        if it is 10 million on your TVCs it does not matter, we
    19        will take it up to that level".  You are not insisting on a
    20        nil return, are you?
    21        A.  You would not get it.
    22
    23   Q.   No, of course you would not.  Suppose you habitually or
    24        regularly got over a period of time from a supplier meat
    25        whose sampling by you -- you are the receiver -- showed
    26        unacceptable levels of salmonella E.coli 057, what would
    27        you say to yourself?
    28        A.  What is unacceptable?  I mean, presumably, 0157 -----
    29
    30   Q.   Suppose you got 0157 over a week four times in a week or a
    31        month?
    32        A.  Well, you have a real problem there then.
    33
    34   Q.   Exactly, so you have.
    35        A.  But the thing is you would not find it, would you?
    36
    37   Q.   I do not know.
    38        A.  Not on McDonald's or McKey's ------
    39
    40   Q.   Suppose you habitually got TVCs over 10 million, might you
    41        not to say to yourself, for example:  "Look, this chap's
    42        hygiene systems are not very good or, worse still, he is
    43        adding in aged beef"?
    44        A.  I accept your premise, that a trend -- and that is the
    45        best use for TVCs -- trend over time of high TVCs is a good
    46        trigger point for examination of systems.
    47
    48   Q.   Is your leg worrying you?  If so, please do sit down?
    49        A.  It is all right.  I will stay standing, if I may, but
    50        it is slightly. 
    51 
    52   Q.   Similarly, within one's own system, mashing up lumps of 
    53        meat and making hamburgers, and I am consistently over a
    54        period of time getting high counts of pathogens or high
    55        TVCs at the end of the line, I have to look at my system,
    56        have I not?
    57        A.  Again please separate out the pathogens.  You will not
    58        find pathogens under that system with any reliable
    59        facility.  As a tool which, as I said -- I stick by it --
    60        it is of no value, the way it was being done, but the TVCs

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