Day 125 - 12 May 95 - Page 09
1 A. Let us say that it heightened our concern. We have
2 always been vigilant about the preparation of our
3 products. When we saw the impact that that situation had
4 on one of our competitors, it just really caused us to
5 review all of our operating procedures and practices. We
6 wanted to further tighten up those practices and procedures
7 to make sure -- very, very sure -- that it would eliminate
8 as much as we could the likelihood of that occurring in one
9 of our restaurants. So as a -----
10
11 Q. Whatever the reasoning was en route, it was a result of the
12 Jack-in-the-box experience, was it?
13 A. Yes. I think it heightened the awareness of everyone
14 in the industry, not just fast service restaurants, but all
15 restaurants. That was fairly devastating to
16 Jack-in-the-Box. It caused us to look into everything we
17 did from A to Z, not just preparation of hamburgers but the
18 handling of products. We had discussions with our
19 suppliers; went over their procedures, policies and
20 procedures, and the handling of raw product coming into
21 their back door; the type of wash that was used for the
22 carcasses that came into their plant; the steps that they
23 implemented in the various -- along the production line.
24
25 So, I think we did a very thorough job in examining all of
26 the steps along the supply line, from the time that the raw
27 product got into the back door of our suppliers to the time
28 that the product was wrapped and presented to our
29 customers. We thought it was the intelligent thing to do,
30 rather than, you know, dismiss the idea that that just
31 happened to someone else; that it just made good business
32 sense for us to be even more vigilant in our quality
33 control procedures and our quality assurance programme, so
34 that that would not happen to us. We just felt that was
35 the intelligent and smart thing to do.
36
37 MS. STEEL: When you say it would not happen to you, it had
38 happened to you 10 years previously?
39 A. No, not the -----
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That was not the context he said it, was it?
42 (To the witness): What I understood you to say is, rather
43 than dismissing it as saying that this incident was just
44 something which had happened to someone else -----
45 A. That is correct.
46
47 Q. I will not repeat it. By all means go on and ask about
48 the other matter.
49
50 MS. STEEL: I am confused actually by what he said.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think he was saying what one has heard in
53 any other number of other contexts. It is very easy in
54 life when someone in the same kind of business as yourself
55 has a negative experience, to say: "Well, that happened to
56 him; it would never happened to me".
57
58 THE WITNESS: Exactly.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: A more intelligent, circumspect, approach
