Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 52
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think we need go into that, because
3 what you are saying is that your recollection is that
4 Dr. Gregory found about 4 per cent and your experience
5 would accord with that?
6 A. Yes.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think we need go back to it to find
9 out what he did say, because whether or not Dr. Gregory's
10 figure was 4 per cent, Dr. Long is saying that would be
11 his.
12
13 MS. STEEL: I have a recollection that Dr. Gregory said that
14 the figures, the national figures were for cattle overall,
15 and that Dr. Gregory did say that the national figures for
16 dairy cows, which is what he witnessed at McDonald's for
17 McDonald's purposes, the national figures for dairy cows
18 would have been lower. I cannot remember exactly when that
19 was.
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Thank you very much. The picture I am
22 getting at the moment is that Dr. Long by one route or
23 another is putting it at about 4 per cent.
24
25 MR. MORRIS: What are your concerns regarding the welfare of the
26 cattle on the prevalence of imperfect stuns?
27 A. Well, it causes pain and suffering. That is an obvious
28 question of ill-fare rather than welfare. The quicker the
29 animal is then put out of its misery it cannot be brought
30 back again, so, unfortunately, it has to be done again. It
31 in effect it dies two deaths.
32
33 Q. You said you had some concerns about the neck cutting or
34 chest splitting?
35 A. Yes.
36
37 Q. Do you want to say what your welfare concerns about that
38 are?
39 A. It is a matter of what the trade calls "bleed-out".
40
41 Q. Would this be automatic, though, when the cow or steer is
42 completely insensible or does it sometimes occur when ----
43 A. Well, it is important to do it expeditiously because
44 the stun is exactly that, and if you do not do it quickly
45 get a big loss of blood then the animal may come back into
46 consciousness. So one wants to get a major vessel
47 severed. It is generally reckoned, certainly in my
48 observation, you get much more blood loss if you take a
49 knife and stick it down into the chest cavity, down there,
50 rather than if you cut off the carotids and the arteries
51 across here. One of the reasons for that is that in cattle
52 you do get a circulation of blood into the head up the
53 vertebral artery into what is called the circle of Willis
54 which circulates the blood round the led. That supply will
55 be maintained if you do not get a very rapid loss of
56 pressure so that the heart cannot keep up the flow through
57 the vertebral artery.
58
59 Q. On what you call ritual killing which McDonald's suppliers
60 use in a number of countries, what you said, the problem
