Day 086 - 09 Feb 95 - Page 65
1 although I am not 100 per cent sure, it may be in some of
2 the attachments I have read through, but we could certainly
3 get hold of that.
4
5 Q. If someone asked you, if Mr. Preston, the President, came
6 to you and said, "I want to know exactly how much meat is
7 arriving at our back door that is not acceptable and being
8 rejected", is that something you could go to straightaway
9 and say, "I can check that straightaway"? You would not
10 have to phone every store in the country just to find out?
11 A. There would be no problem. It could be done within
12 minutes.
13
14 Q. That would apply to any other deliveries, would it, as well
15 such as salad?
16 A. Yes, chilled and frozen.
17
18 Q. Do you know what percentage of food deliveries would be
19 rejected on average over a year, what percentage?
20 A. No, but I could find out very quickly from Golden West
21 and McKey what had been returned back to them. It is also
22 informed to the QA Department if a product arrives at the
23 store that is not right. It is another of the critical
24 control points throughout the whole chain.
25
26 Q. Do you know what the most commonest reasons for rejection
27 are, just from your memory or experience?
28 A. Yes, one of them is lettuce that is rejected because it
29 is watery. This was because sometimes the lorries are
30 between -- some of it is frozen, some of it is chilled, and
31 if you put the lettuce close to the freezer within the
32 chilled compartment it can go too cold and then cause the
33 lettuce to deteriorate. So watery lettuce, lettuce not up
34 to best condition, is the most common one.
35
36 Q. What about raw meat products, meat, chicken?
37 A. That is rare. From a frozen warehouse again there are
38 checks within Golden West before it goes on, temperature
39 checks on to a lorry, you have the temperature dial with a
40 graph printout on the lorry so the driver can make sure it
41 is at the right temperature. Then the next check is as a
42 back door to make sure it is the right temperature. The
43 meat and chicken and fish products are normally fine. If
44 anything, what we have is nothing at all or maybe a
45 catastrophic failure so that the whole truck breaks down or
46 something like that, so everything is thrown away.
47
48 Q. But when your staff check, well, the crew or whatever
49 checks the temperature of the lorry when it arrives -- is
50 that correct?
51 A. Yes. I know for a fact you have to do the probe test
52 with the pyrometer between the products, and I believe we
53 record what temperature is on the truck or either the truck
54 driver records it on his form.
55
56 Q. The staff from the store, do they check or verify or even
57 know what the temperature in the truck is when it arrives?
58 Is that automatically passed on? What I am saying is, when
59 the truck arrives do you know what the temperature of the
60 truck is?
