Day 217 - 09 02 96 - Page 14
DAY 217
MRS. HOVI, Examined:
1 either during the break when the line had not been cleared
2 of carcasses.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Pause there. Yes?
5 A. The next point I would like to take up is paragraph 17
6 on page 9. There were normally three meat inspectors
7 working on the line. Usually, the manning level is four
8 meat inspectors, but one meat inspector usually is resting
9 while the others are working on the line. So, normally,
10 you would have three meat inspectors on the line at any one
11 time.
12
13 In paragraph 18, Mr. Bone comes back again to wheeling the
14 front feet and horn bins across the line and states that
15 the wheeling was done during the breaks. I admit that the
16 attempt was made to do it during the breaks, but usually
17 the men who were at the end of the slaughter line wanted to
18 get off to their break as soon as possible and would not
19 wait until the slaughter line had been emptied of carcasses
20 at that point. That is where the contradiction arose, and
21 I had to stop them doing that several times, and it
22 appeared to be a normal practice.
23
24 Further, on paragraph number 18, Mr. Bone says that the
25 bins were taken to the back of the abattoir and cleaned
26 there. This was not the case at the time I started working
27 at Jarrets. The bins were normally not cleaned at all, not
28 even at the end of the working day, let alone during the
29 working day.
30
31 During my stay there, I insisted on having a man who did
32 not work in the abattoir, inside the abattoir, but was
33 solely working in the dirty side and would not enter the
34 abattoir at all, whose responsibility was to keep clean the
35 dirty side of the abattoir and clean these bins during the
36 day; and Jarrets agreed to this and a man was -- by the
37 time I left there was a man solely working for this
38 purpose.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What, cleaning the bins?
41 A. He cleaned the bins, and keeping the back side of the
42 abattoir clean.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: He was assigned to the dirty side in general?
45 A. Yes.
46
47 Q. Including the bins?
48 A. Yes; and his duty also was to keep the doors leading to
49 the dirty side of the abattoir through hide and skins room,
50 the fat room, the contaminated room, all these doors on the
51 top side of the abattoir as on the map, closed and to
52 report any faults on the doors to Mr. Bone.
53
54 Q. So the dirty side is everything from, what, the hide and
55 skin room, all the way along to the casualty kill, is it?
56 A. Yes, all that is already dirty side.
57
58 Q. You made sure one person was assigned just to that job?
59 A. Yes.
60
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