Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 16
1 Q. Right. The other bacteria on that list, you say regularly
2 the gut contents do contaminate. How do the other ones
3 crop up? Are they always present or sometimes?
4 A. Staphylococci are present on the surface of the skin of
5 both animals and human beings and the contamination then
6 happens during the slaughter either by the slaughtermen or
7 from the skin of the animals.
8
9 Q. The other ones?
10 A. Clostridium perfringens would be -- it is an ebictus
11 bacteria that exists everywhere and usually you find
12 basically everywhere and that would be just environmental
13 contamination as a result of this.
14
15 Q. When you say "everywhere", do you mean everywhere in the
16 abattoir?
17 A. Everywhere in the soil, in the air. That is one the
18 reasons why we try and isolate the abattoir from the
19 outside world. That is there should be strict separation
20 of dirty side and clean side.
21
22 Q. When you say "everywhere", you mean everywhere in the
23 abattoir in the air in the soil around the abattoir?
24 A. Yes.
25
26 Q. It is not in this courtroom everywhere?
27 A. It probably has come into this courtroom. People feed
28 as well. I am sure that we could find it here if we looked
29 for it.
30
31 Q. Does it occur in the same levels?
32 A. No, obviously the more dirt basically, common sense
33 dirt you have around, the clostridium perfringens you would
34 have as well.
35
36 Q. Does the abattoir have more or less dirt than ----.
37 A. It depends on the abattoir. If you have very good
38 separation of dirty and clean side, and you have a good
39 separation of the outside world in general and you clean
40 yourself properly when you enter the abattoir, you clean
41 your boots, and you clean your hands basically, then
42 obviously you are going to cut down that load considerably.
43
44 Q. Are any of those pathogens not destroyed by cooking?
45 A. Yes, basically all these pathogens are destroyed by
46 cooking. The only thing I would say about the
47 staphylococcus aueus and clostridium perfringens is that
48 they can, under certain conditions when they proliferate
49 they produce toxins, and they are called basically food
50 poisoning organisms that cause food poisoning via the
51 toxins rather than infiltration of the bacteria in the
52 human gut.
53
54 If I may explain this a little bit more, clarify this a
55 little more. If you take salmonella, for example,
56 salmonella is pathogenic to humans in a sense that it will
57 enter the human gut epethelium and cause damage in it and
58 thus cause diarrhoea whereas staphylococcus aureus that
59 produces toxins during its proliferation, those toxins
60 remain in the food and the toxins then cause the poisoning
