Day 115 - 06 Apr 95 - Page 03

     
     1        I mean, I have here one or two documents, particularly FAWC
     2        reports, which are having some effect.  But I must say that
     3        I am not over optimistic because some of these improvements
     4        are only expressed as codes of practice.  Therefore, it
     5        makes very difficult to exert some of the reforms that
     6        should be implemented.
     7
     8   Q.   You will have noticed, will you not, from reading
     9        Mr. Bowes' evidence, for example, that much of what one
    10        might call beneficial animal welfare conditions were in
    11        place long before any code came into practice?
    12        A.  In fact, the progress has not been steady.  In the
    13        1950s, for instance, one could go back there, the broiler
    14        revolution came in.  Then there was a reaction with Ruth
    15        Harrison's "Animal Machines", and that started to reverse
    16        the bad practices that had overtaken, if you like, the
    17        traditional practices.  Then we had the Bramble Committee
    18        and ever since then we have had an effort to reverse the
    19        increasing intensification.  Sometimes one side has gained,
    20        sometimes the other, so that it has not been any steady
         progress and there have been a lot of regressions.
    22
    23   Q.   Let me take an example, can I, of what I just put to you
    24        which I am not sure that what you have just said is really
    25        an answer.  Did you notice that Mr. Bowes told us that, so
    26        far as his business is concerned, it goes back I think
    27        three generations, or two, they have never used dry sow
    28        stalls or tethers?
    29        A.  I noticed that, yes.
    30
    31   Q.   That their indoor pigs had always been kept on straw?
    32        A.  I was not quite sure in the context of this case how
    33        many of those pigs, how much of what he said was actually
    34        relevant to what goes to McDonald's or to other
    35        slaughterhouses feeding McDonald's.  It seemed to me that a
    36        lot of what he said pertained to the RSPCA's Freedom
    37        Scheme.
    38
    39   MS. STEEL:  Can I just make an interruption which is that
    40        Mr. Rampton said:  "So far as his business is concerned
         they have never used dry sow stalls or tethers".  If it is
    42        Mr. Bowes' own farms ------
    43
    44   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  In fact, that is how I had interpreted
    45        it.  It is quite right to make the point that the business
    46        may -- you had interpreted it as meaning the Bowes as
    47        farmers themselves?
    48        A.  They also seem to be slaughterers and they took in,
    49        I think, a large proportion at one point -----
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I am not asking you to argue the 
    52        matter.  When you agreed that Bowes had never used dry sow 
    53        stalls, you were agreeing in so far as the Bowes family'
    54        farms themselves were concerned?
    55        A.  Yes.
    56
    57   MR. RAMPTON:  It is entirely what I meant.  When I said the
    58        Bowes' business, I meant his family farms and his contract
    59        finishers.  I did not mean the 60 per cent of pigs that he
    60        buys in from outside independent producers.