Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 43
1 contaminated the food. This is a very well-known
2 mechanism.
3
4 There is a secondary mechanism involved in the use of
5 cloths, is that people who then touch those cloths then
6 acquire finger tip contamination and if they then go on to
7 handle the food can transfer the contamination on to that
8 food. So, yes, this is a widely known mechanism.
9
10 Q. I am not really sure 100 per cent whether this has been
11 covered or not, so to save time just in case anything has
12 been missed out, would you be happy to have paragraphs 17
13 and 22 of your statement of 13th January taken as read or
14 is there anything you -----
15 A. 17.2.22?
16
17 Q. No, 17 and 22?
18 A. Yes.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: I think there was just one other question:
21 Mr. Walker said that McDonald's insist their meat is E.coli
22 free. This is when he is being examined by Mr. Rampton, he
23 asked: "McDonald's insist that their meat is E.coli free,
24 in effect; is that right?" He said: "Yes". Have you any
25 comment on that?
26 A. From direct personal experience, if Mr. Walker made
27 that -- if Mr. Walker that as a statement outside the
28 court, in other words, if anybody, either McDonald's or
29 Mr. Walker, said -- and I appreciate actually that they
30 have not actually said that, but if he said it there would
31 be good cause to consider that an offence had been created
32 under the Trades Description Act.
33
34 The reason I say that is because we had an identical
35 scenario with salmonella in laying hens. Poultry men were
36 going out doing very, very much more rigorous testing than
37 was carried out on Mr. Walker's meat and putting signs up
38 saying "salmonella free".
39
40 They were instructed under threat of prosecution by Trading
41 Standards Officers to remove those signs and to desist from
42 making such claims which could not be substantiated. The
43 only claim that would be allowable would be that they had
44 been tested and the tests had failed to reveal X, Y and Z.
45
46 Q. For the record, that statement is actually in the
47 transcript on day 77, page 45, line 18. That is,
48 Mr. Walker was asked what his response was.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You do not need to look it up.
51
52 MS. STEEL: There is something else that I was looking for: Is
53 lactic acid in meat produced as a result of stress in the
54 animal?
55 A. No, lactic acid is formed by exercise in extreme cases
56 -- extreme exertion in the live animal where the body
57 outstrips the capability of the blood supply to support
58 individual muscle with oxygen, and this happens in us as
59 well. That is how you get a stitch if you run incredibly
60 fast for a long time; you can start feeling a stitch. That
