Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 19
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You must get your publicity for that
3 elsewhere, quite frankly.
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5 MR. MORRIS: It is not publicity. It is a point we are making.
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7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have told you, this leaflet means more than
8 that.
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10 MR. MORRIS: Right. OK.
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12 MS. STEEL: Moving on to pigs, going through the evidence of
13 Mr. Ashley Bowes, the director of GG Bowes and Sons, of
14 Watton in Norfolk, he said that Bowes owns roughly one
15 hundred thousand pigs -- that was day 88, page 2, line 47
16 -- but they also buy pigs from other producers. In fact,
17 approximately 60 percent of the factory production was
18 brought from other producers. The reference for that is
19 day 88, page 2, line 55. He said that they do not own
20 enough land even for the 100,000 pigs that are owned by
21 Bowes so some of them were reared on other farms, roughly,
22 kind of, under their guidance but not totally, with the
23 other farms providing the labour and basically carrying out
24 the work but Bowes providing the food and veterinary
25 attention where necessary. That was on day 88, page 4,
26 line 14. I think he said that there were about 70 other
27 farmers. He said that Bowes had 2,300 sows in indoor units
28 and 4,000 sows in outdoor units. That was day 88, page 3,
29 line 24.
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31 MR JUSTICE BELL: Let me just get those figures again. How many
32 sows in outdoor?
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34 MS. STEEL: 4,000 in outdoor units. These were the ones that
35 were actually owned by Bowes. They are the breeders as
36 well. I mean, obviously, they go for meat but they are not
37 the kind of ones that are being -- I don't know.
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39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, I understand that. What was the figure
40 for -----?
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42 MS. STEEL: 2,300 for indoors, 4,000 for outdoor units.
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44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Those figures were just slightly
45 different to Dr. Gregory were they not? But it does not
46 matter, it is not significant. He said 60 percent of their
47 breeding units were outside. Nine outdoor units with about
48 500 sows on each, and then about 40 percent indoors. But
49 -----
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51 MS. STEEL: Mr. Bowes said that obviously they have got more.
52 Like, he was giving more recent figures. In fact, I think
53 the general thrust of Mr. Bowes' evidence was that they
54 were moving away from indoor systems. I mean, obviously,
55 they were not doing it totally because companies like
56 McDonald's were not willing to pay the higher price for the
57 outdoor pork, but that over time... Because I think Dr.
58 Bowes said that there was a point in the 1970s when all of
59 the company's pigs were inside and that they had gradually
60 come more outside from that time. I probably have a
