Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 22

     
     1        concerning the Jarretts abattoir before I started working.
     2
     3        Also, every time, or in most cases when a Ministry of
     4        Agriculture inspector comes to inspect the plant, he makes
     5        a note of the line speed at the time he is inspecting a
     6        plant.  This is to show that these were the conditions
     7        under which he saw the slaughter happening and then, if
     8        there is any dispute about the hygiene and the slaughter
     9        practices, with the OVS, for example, or with the plant
    10        management, it can be said, well, this type of hygiene
    11        standards were possible at this line speed but at a higher
    12        line speed they are not necessarily not possible.  The
    13        hygiene standards are very, very closely related to the
    14        line speed not to the general throughput of the abattoir.
    15
    16   Q.   What were the other recommendations from the MAFF that you
    17        can recall?
    18
    19   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, again I have a gravest reservation about
    20        this.  Your Lordship gave the Defendants very considerable
         help about how to get hold of documents themselves.
    22        Nothing has happened.  I very much doubt this witness is,
    23        as a matter of admissibility, allowed to give your Lordship
    24        a second-hand account of documents which are not in court
    25        when they could be.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:  Right.  First of all, I think that Ms. Hovi is
    28        reporting about her professional duties and concerns at the
    29        plant which will, obviously, encompass any communication
    30        from the Ministry of Agriculture.  We have applied for the
    31        documents to do with correspondence with the MAFF.  I have
    32        had detailed conversations with Eville and Jones'
    33        employees.  They said that they sent the relevant documents
    34        two days ago.
    35
    36        I checked with the Post Office this morning and they had
    37        not arrived at that stage.
    38
    39        I am a little bit conscious that it is possible that,
    40        depending on Mr. Rampton's cross-examination, the witness
         may not be here tomorrow, or she may be.  But, in any
    42        event, I may not get the documents tomorrow and, therefore,
    43        she should be entitled to say what concerns in her
    44        professional duties she had to be concerned with.
    45        Obviously, if we get the documents and she has left the
    46        witness box, we would want to put a Civil Evidence Act
    47        Notice on them maybe with a supplementary statement from
    48        the witness verifying them.
    49
    50        At the moment, she is doing it from memory which, in fact, 
    51        should strengthen the evidence because the documents will 
    52        back up what she has already said in court.  Of course, the 
    53        Plaintiffs' own witness, Mr. Bennett, referred to stacks of
    54        documents which were not produced but Mr. Rampton had no
    55        problem with that at that time.
    56
    57   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I am going to suggest is you put this
    58        over.  It may mean Ms. Hovi has to come back.  You may get
    59        the documents by tomorrow, but I think this does fall foul
    60        of the rule as to secondary evidence which, put as simply