Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 18

     
     1        court from time to time?
     2        A.  Yes, I have been here once when Mr. Bennett appeared.
     3
     4   Q.   You have not read the transcripts apart from that?
     5        A.  No.  I have read the transcripts from Mr. Bennett's
     6        evidence.
     7
     8   Q.   You have?
     9        A.  Yes, that is the only one.
    10
    11   Q.   But not Professor Jackson, for instance?
    12        A.  No.
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:  Just very briefly, to finish off this area, it will
    15        probably come up when we look at the floor plan, but -----
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I will rise for five minutes now.  What
    18        I suggest is you have had Ms. Hovi give an outline of what
    19        the general risks are from her aspect.  We have had quite a
    20        lot of evidence about it already.  What I suggest is you go
         on now to adduce such evidence as she is able to give of
    22        the practices or non-practices which she says prevail at
    23        Jarretts which would give rise to a risk of contamination
    24        or contamination which was not dealt with and so on.
    25
    26        We will have the five-minute break now to give you a moment
    27        to think about it.
    28
    29                       (Short Adjournment)
    30
    31   MR. MORRIS:  To save time, we thought it might be helpful to ask
    32        Mr. Rampton to identify what common grounds he thinks there
    33        is, because that would be very helpful.
    34
    35   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I will let Mr. Rampton say anything he wishes
    36        to do so before I make any comment.
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON: I would much rather your Lordship answered that
    39        query.  I am not sure I am in a position to say anything on
    40        common ground yet.
    41
    42   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I have in mind is this, as a general
    43        statement, it is common ground that the guts of animals
    44        which come into slaughterhouses contain various pathogens
    45        which, if they escape from the gut of the animal on to the
    46        dehided carcass of, for instance, a steer, the carcass of a
    47        pig, or the carcass of a chicken, and go undetected and
    48        undealt with, may lead to food poisoning in humans.
    49
    50        That may be food poisoning properly so-called where the 
    51        organism is allowed to multiply to a dangerous level, or it 
    52        may be food-borne disease where the pathogen is one which 
    53        is or may be pathogenic in its original quantities without
    54        having to multiply between, say, the point of slaughter and
    55        the point of ingestion.
    56
    57        We have had a deal of evidence about different pathogens
    58        and we have had a deal of evidence about testing whether
    59        for total colony counts of bacteria which, dare I say, most
    60        of which are probably spoilage bacteria rather than