Day 091 - 17 Feb 95 - Page 60
1 glaringly obvious like it is has keeled over or not moving
2 out of the way when you are walking?
3 A. They are experienced people. They can detect whether
4 anything is normal or abnormal.
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there a sort of motto like: "If in doubt,
7 cull"? There obviously is not a lot of picking up a bird
8 or feeling it or examining it?
9 A. I think the general advice is that if a bird appears to
10 be suffering in any way, then it should be culled.
11 If it has got a twisted leg or if it is just sitting not
12 growing properly, that would be classed as a cull and
13 certainly the advice would be to remove that.
14
15 MS. STEEL: When you walk into a shed the birds move away, do
16 they not?
17 A. They do.
18
19 Q. They all go and huddle together?
20 A. Yes, that would be the reaction to a stranger. The
21 poultry men or the farm manager who walks the sheds every
22 day, generally you see them walking up and down amongst the
23 birds and they do not really move very much.
24
25 Q. They do not move out of the way at all?
26 A. They do move out of the way but they do not move as
27 much as it is a stranger.
28
29 Q. But it would be natural for them to huddle together in that
30 situation even when it is a stockman?
31 A. It would be natural for them to move away from somebody
32 walking through the shed, yes.
33
34 Q. As a consequence, they would be fairly huddled together?
35 A. They could be, yes.
36
37 Q. In those circumstances, you would not necessarily be able
38 to see that, I do not know, the legs were not A1?
39 A. I think you do not observe every individual bird but,
40 with experience, certainly you pick them up if there are
41 any, if there is anything abnormal going on.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there a particular point you want to deal
44 with now?
45
46 MS. STEEL: I will just put to the witness, if I put to you that
47 it is completely impossible to deal and check for the
48 welfare of individual birds using that system, unless
49 something is blatantly obvious, would you accept that?
50 A. No, I would not because I think, with experience, and
51 these people tend to do these jobs for many, many years,
52 they do very much have an affinity with the stock where
53 they know if anything is normal or abnormal. I have seen
54 many situations where they do pick out individuals that are
55 affected within the -- you have only got to move amongst
56 poultry to know if they move as a group. They will,
57 generally, the healthy ones will do that, if one is sick it
58 will normally hang back and not move from the group. So it
59 becomes very obvious if one is abnormal.
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