Day 129 - 25 May 95 - Page 10
1 who was closer to the incident and based in the Birmingham
2 office. Because of the speed with which we had to react it
3 was carried out by someone who is now Food Safety Officer,
4 is her title". "Who is that?" "A woman by the name of
5 Jill Barnes".
6 A. Well, you can see he got his facts a little mixed up
7 because I am not Food Safety Officer. I certainly know of
8 the incident. I know of the results of our investigation
9 of the incident. I did actually visit the store myself,
10 just to take an extra calibration kit just to test theirs,
11 but Mark dealt with the investigation and liaised with the
12 Environmental Health Officer. It is his role, in working
13 for me in the region, to do that. At the time
14 I just happened to be also based out of that office, and
15 I live about 20 minutes from that restaurant.
16
17 Q. The problem was with electronic beeping devices, was it
18 not?
19 A. It was an investigation that we never really got a
20 satisfactory answer from, in terms of what went wrong, but
21 from what the crew members told us, who had been involved,
22 and the shift manager, we believe that somebody got mixed
23 up with the timers and took the basket out early. Also,
24 although it was served to the little girl, she did not
25 actually eat any so she was not at risk at all.
26
27 Q. I am sure that is a great comfort.
28 A. Well, it is in terms of the safety of the child. The
29 last thing we want to do is to serve under-cooked food.
30
31 Q. But it might be the reason she did not eat it was because
32 it appeared under-cooked?
33 A. Exactly.
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It almost certainly was. What you are saying
36 is, fortunately, she did not go any further?
37 A. Exactly.
38
39 MS. STEEL: It does not make it all right, though.
40 A. No. We do not want to serve under-cooked food. We
41 want to serve it right every time. That is why we
42 investigated it. We worked with the Environmental Health
43 Officer. We changed the timers on that station. We have
44 since made it mandatory in all of the restaurants to have,
45 again, a new type of timer that was available fitted to the
46 chicken station.
47
48 Q. Can you describe what the difference is with the new type
49 of timer?
50 A. There is a new type of computerised timer. There are
51 two versions of it. The version where you can alter the
52 beeping device on it is again very new. We have only had
53 it less than a year in any restaurant. Shrewsbury had two
54 types of timer, so what we were able to do there was swap
55 one of the older ones for one of the newer ones, and put it
56 on the chicken station. We have now done that Company-wide
57 as well, since we realised that that mix up factor seems to
58 have been involved here with the under-cooking, and it
59 means with new timers we can alter the pitch of the beep.
60
