Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 26


     
     1
     2                          (Short Adjournment)
     3
     4   MR. MORRIS:   Just on the last point I made about chicken being
     5        cooked at 70 degrees for two minutes, I have checked on the
     6        figures for that, so it may well be that McDonald's
     7        specifications are above that, but if chicken is
     8        undercooked obviously there is a problem.  That will be
     9        accepted by everybody, I should think.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I have the preliminary view that the most
    12        important aspect is what goes on in the restaurants.  If
    13        the leaflet means what the Plaintiffs say it does, the most
    14        important issues are what goes on in the restaurants
    15        because there is quite a lot of common ground as to what
    16        the situation is until then.  I know there was an awful lot
    17        of issue about the load of micro-organisms and the
    18        microbiological testing, but there was not actually a lot
    19        of difference there at the end of the day.  It turned out
    20        that most of the organisms were ones which related to
    21        deterioration of the meat, but oddly enough they were
    22        rather stronger than the ones which affected human beings
    23        and the more there were of them the more they knocked the
    24        others on the head.
    25
    26        But there are certain potentially dangerous organisms which
    27        I may decide by and large are not tested for because they
    28        are nearly always there, or are not tested for in a way
    29        which is likely to find them so as to stop the meat there
    30        and then.  But the one thing which is common ground is that
    31        to be safe it has got to be properly cooked.  What it may
    32        be I have got to look at, is there evidence that it is not
    33        properly cooked?  Obviously, on occasions it is not
    34        properly cooked, but is there evidence that it is not
    35        properly cooked to a state where there is a real risk of
    36        food poisoning, if the Plaintiffs' construction of the
    37        leaflet is correct.
    38
    39   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, I mean, I think that despite the Plaintiffs'
    40        attempt to challenge the pre-store contamination in the
    41        live animal, in the slaughter house, in production, et
    42        cetera, it is largely conceded that the food products
    43        through that process -  and we are talking here about
    44        particularly beef and chicken, minced meat and chicken are
    45        the ones that are identified in the leaflet that are
    46        particularly identified although the growth promoting
    47        hormone drugs, pesticide residues and antibiotics used
    48        relate to animals in general, according to the leaflet.
    49
    50        But I think that it is demonstrated without any real
    51        challenge whatsoever that the products carry a risk when
    52        they arrive in the store, and that really should be the end
    53        of it but on top of showing that there is a risk we are
    54        able to demonstrate that that risk is a fragile - that the
    55        system set up to deal with it, having failed all the way
    56        along the line, effectively, to prevent that risk, then in
    57        the cooking process are so fragile and flawed, not by
    58        oversight, although in some cases it can be by oversight,
    59        but also because of the McDonald's employment conditions,
    60        the system that they set up, the pressure, the young,

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