Day 090 - 16 Feb 95 - Page 52
1 A. They are counted into crates. They are counted by the
2 catching team, yes.
3
4 Q. Is a record kept of that?
5 A. Yes, there is.
6
7 Q. Do you compare the figures of the birds going to slaughter
8 with the figures, the original stocking figures and the
9 numbers of mortalities?
10 A. Yes, we do. It is very important.
11
12 Q. Is it the case that there are often birds unaccounted for?
13 A. Occasionally you will get discrepancies that the number
14 of birds delivered to the farm has been incorrectly
15 recorded. Occasionally the catchers will find that there
16 are more birds there than they expected. These instances
17 do occur, but they are not frequent and we usually have to
18 find an explanation.
19
20 Q. What about instances of there being less birds than
21 expected?
22 A. It usually means that there were less delivered in the
23 first place. What can happen is that the hatchery, for
24 example, say they are expected to hatch 14,000, that would
25 be the calculated amount for the day, they might only hatch
26 13,000, they deliver those to the farm but the farm records
27 them as 14,000 when in fact there were only 13,000.
28
29 Q. How would you check that six weeks later?
30 A. The only way you can check it is to go back to the
31 hatchery. The records in the hatchery will always be
32 accurate. Sometimes data can be misplaced between the
33 hatchery and the farm by the delivery driver or whoever,
34 and the accurate source of the records would be back at the
35 hatchery.
36
37 Q. What happens to the environment/index.html">litter that is cleaned out of the
38 broiler sheds at Sun Valley?
39 A. The environment/index.html">litter is sold to local farmers as a fertilizer, an
40 organic fertilizer, which they spread on the land.
41
42 Q. It is sometimes used as food for other animals?
43 A. Well, not in the case of our environment/index.html">litter. There are
44 processes which can allow that to happen, but in our case
45 our environment/index.html">litter goes for spreading on the land.
46
47 Q. You know that?
48 A. I do.
49
50 Q. Has that always been the case?
51 A. Yes, it has.
52
53 Q. In the industry in general, does the environment/index.html">litter sometimes get
54 fed back to the poultry?
55 A. The environment/index.html">litter would not be fed back to the poultry, no.
56
57 Q. So it would go to things like cows and pigs?
58 A. The technology is available to allow that to happen
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: We will take our break there.
