Day 099 - 08 Mar 95 - Page 35
1 Q. "34. Cleaning efficiency check for microbiologically",
2 what does that mean? What process is that?
3 A. That is really what we have just discussed actually,
4 the swabs and the contact plates.
5
6 Q. You take the contact plate and the swab and then you cart
7 it off to the lab and analyse it?
8 A. And try to grow some bugs on it, yes.
9
10 Q. Try to grow some bugs, yes. Then 35 -- we saw
11 microbiological analysis of the product on arrival or the
12 meat on arrival -- is "microbiological analysis of finished
13 product"?
14 A. Yes.
15
16 Q. Have you seen them doing that?
17 A. Yes.
18
19 Q. How extensively do they do it, do you know?
20 A. The microbiological testing is heavily weighted on the
21 side of the raw material, so that they know that the
22 quality of the raw material going in the production is
23 good. So, they would do at least every batch of product
24 would be -- finished product would be tested, but every
25 single consignment of raw material into the factory is also
26 tested.
27
28 Q. Only out of curiosity, what does 37 mean, "cooking dispatch
29 check"?
30 A. It is just an additional cooking test. The product is
31 taken off the production line for the cooking tests that
32 were mentioned earlier but, in addition to that, because
33 the product may have been, or has been, stored in the
34 freezer for a period of time before it is dispatched, they
35 take samples of product out of the freezer, open a case or
36 two on a pallet, take some product and cook them again, so
37 it is an additional cooking test.
38
39 Q. Then the addition since 1989, meat traceability
40 checks. "40. Raw materials checked for the presence of
41 E.coli 0157". We know about that. "41. Internal
42 temperature checks on cooked hamburger patties". Is that
43 part of the same thing as 30 and 31, as it were?
44 A. It will be done on those products, yes.
45
46 Q. On your side of the business, suppose for a moment a
47 consignment of unsatisfactory product arrived at a
48 restaurant, unsatisfactory in the sense that the
49 temperature was too high or when you had it analysed its
50 microbiological count was too high, can you trace the
51 things back to source?
52 A. We can. It is very important that we can actually do
53 that and we do, yes.
54
55 Q. Or if it is passed its shelf life date, or something like
56 that?
57 A. As long as we have the code, all our products are coded
58 sufficiently to allow us to trace them back so that we know
59 what raw materials were used in that product so what other
60 batches could possibly be affected.
