Day 097 - 06 Mar 95 - Page 42
1 MR. RAMPTON: All right. I will ask the witness.
2 (To the witness): Does McKey specification, Mr. Chambers,
3 allow the use of bull meat?
4 A. No.
5
6 Q. How do you ensure it does not get into the meat which you
7 send to McKey?
8 A. Because, being a production line, we obviously produce
9 certain types or debone certain types of meat at certain
10 times. We would not put a bull forequarter down with a
11 load of cow forequarters, for instance.
12
13 Q. This may seem to you a blindingly obvious and rather stupid
14 question, how can you tell the difference between, for
15 example, bull forequarter -- do not laugh, please, I have
16 to ask this question -- and a heifer forequarter?
17 A. Generally speaking, it would be larger but the
18 carcasses are selected for boning at the chilling stage
19 before that, and at that stage they have actually got a
20 label on saying what they are which has come from the
21 slaughter hall, so .....
22
23 Q. What about old, wet screw cows or canner quality cows; does
24 McKeys allow you to send them that sort of meat?
25 A. No.
26
27 Q. How do you ensure that it does not happen?
28 A. It is pretty self-governing really because the
29 hindquarters of the sides largely go for export and, you
30 know, nobody really requires that type of meat anyway, so
31 it is self-governing. We do not have forequarters with
32 those cows if we do not have hindquarters.
33
34 MS. STEEL: Can I just say something which is that we actually
35 asked that Mr. Rampton did not ask leading questions. He
36 could quite easily have said to the witness: "What type of
37 meat will McKeys accept and what will they not accept?" He
38 has gone ahead and asked the leading questions
39 nonetheless. I think that it should not carry on.
40 Mr. Rampton knows what our matters in issue, and he should
41 not be asking leading questions.
42
43 MR. RAMPTON: It is not a leading question, I do not believe, my
44 Lord, to ask whether McKeys allows the use of this, that or
45 the other kind of meat.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I would not have thought it was leading
48 question which offends if you point witnesses at a
49 particular topic or article and ask whether they take that
50 or not. There are various definitions of leading
51 questions, one of which at one time was which allowed of
52 the question "yes" or "no", but that is totally
53 impracticable. As far as I am concerned, a leading
54 question is one which points the witness at a particular
55 answer. To ask whether someone accepts this, that or the
56 other does not point them at the answer.
57
58 MS. STEEL: It does when it is said in a way that implies that
59 there is something -- it would have been a simple matter
60 just to ask what meat will they accept.
