Day 086 - 09 Feb 95 - Page 49
1 taken are very, very effective.
2
3 MR. MORRIS: Yes, but, surely, Mr. Atherton, the problem is not
4 how often it happens but what the causes are and whether
5 there is a risk. There may be, for all anybody knows,
6 thousands of other people that contract food poisoning you
7 do not know about. That is a fact, is it not, in food
8 poisoning, generally, most cases do not get reported, do
9 they? You would know that as an expert in that area.
10 A. I think it is accepted that most cases of food
11 poisoning, the actual source of it, is not always known.
12
13 Q. Yes, and also most do not get reported, do they?
14 A. Not all of them get reported.
15
16 Q. You would not want people to be suffering food poisoning
17 from McDonald's, would you?
18 A. Well, it would not really serve our interests. We
19 would not be in business very long if we had a system that
20 allowed our customers to contract food poisoning.
21
22 Q. So, when there are statutory investigations into major
23 outbreaks of food poisoning at McDonald's, would you not
24 expect to see what the statutory authorities have to say
25 about that so that you can learn from their
26 recommendations?
27 A. I agree.
28
29 Q. Or their criticism?
30 A. I agree with you totally, and that would have been the
31 case if I was in my position when the Preston outbreak
32 happened. I was not; I was an Operations Manager in
33 Anglia. The people who were in position heard about it,
34 acted upon it, took the recommendations seriously, altered
35 our systems in any way.
36
37 Q. So would you have expected to have seen this document then?
38 A. I believe Jill Barnes was in position then and the
39 hierarchy above, her Kevin Haag -- I deal with matters that
40 are current.
41
42 Q. If the authorities had found both in Preston and in Oregon
43 that during busy periods certain parts of the grill were
44 cooler than the temperature standards established by
45 McDonald's, and thought that was responsible for the
46 under-cooking of the burgers leading to the food poisoning
47 outbreak, would that knowledge, if you had seen it or if
48 you see it now, help to focus your mind on a potential area
49 of hazard?
50 A. I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to ask that
51 question again. You have lost me somewhere along the line.
52
53 Q. Helen was asking you earlier about the differences in
54 temperature in various parts of the grill, if you remember,
55 back, middle, front; if the authorities were also concerned
56 about that, would that -----
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause a moment, Mr. Morris. Is there
59 any difficulty about the question? (To the witness): If
60 you had been informed of an enquiry or a problem, potential
