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
