Day 217 - 09 02 96 - Page 16
DAY 217
MRS. HOVI, Examined:
1 A. Where you see the words "blood trough".
2
3 MR. MORRIS: Above that?
4 A. Above that there was a man who actually did the
5 bleeding. But this meant that he had a difficulty of
6 accessing the sterilizer and hand and apron wash, on the
7 other side of the words "blood trough", and he
8 obviously -----
9
10 Q. Hang on.
11 A. So he had difficulty in accessing the sterilizer that
12 was meant for his use and he, therefore, often failed to
13 sterilize his knife or wash his hands between the
14 carcasses.
15
16 I discussed this with the slaughter floor manager and the
17 slaughtermen themselves, because they themselves found the
18 situation very unsatisfactory. They were usually covered
19 in blood and could only wash themselves irregularly, which
20 meant that the blood caked on them, and they found it
21 difficult to clean themselves for the breaks.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Pause there. (Pause) Yes.
24 A. Paragraph 21 deals with the same issue of pithing and
25 bleeding again. I think we have covered most of that,
26 apart from the fact that I did discuss and suggested that
27 unless there was a sterilizer installed for the pithing
28 rod, the pithing would have to be discontinued. This,
29 understandably, was resisted; and I felt that there was
30 a -----
31
32 Q. Who did you discuss that with?
33 A. With the floor manager for the abattoir, for the
34 slaughter hall.
35
36 Q. Pause there, then.
37 A. Pardon?
38
39 Q. Pause there, please. (Pause) The slaughter could carry on
40 without pithing the animal; it just involved a risk of one
41 of the slaughtermen being caught by a flailing hoof?
42 A. That is right. There are quite a few abattoirs in the
43 world where the pithing is done -----
44
45 Q. Yes. I was just making sure that my recollection of that
46 was right.
47 A. Yes.
48
49 Q. Yes. Well, what came of that?
50 A. Well, for safety considerations, we did leave the
51 situation as it was, and the request for a pithing rod
52 sterilizer was entered in one of the minutes of one of the
53 meetings I had with the management.
54
55 Q. Pause there. Yes?
56 A. This safety consideration was particularly pressing,
57 because the man who bled the animal was in such a tight
58 corner where he was standing, there should not really have
59 been a man there who was standing there, and he would have
60 probably been kicked by an animal if we had not done the
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