Day 217 - 09 02 96 - Page 47
DAY 217
1 facilities; and it did not seem clear to me, to anybody who
2 has not been at the abattoir, that that hand wash there is
3 up on a platform rather than on the floor level.
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: Am I right, you are telling us in any event that
6 that man by the bleed hoist does not use that apron wash
7 and that sterilizer?
8 A. He uses very little. He did not use -----
9
10 Q. Is that because it is too far away?
11 A. It seemed to be the point. I felt that he,
12 particularly since I was trying to slow down the stunning
13 of the animals, I felt that he had plenty of time to wash
14 himself before he went to stun an animal after he had
15 stunned an animal and before he did anything to the stunned
16 animal. But that was not the case at Jarrets. The men
17 were not trained to do this.
18
19 Q. Mrs. Hovi, last time you were here -- I have just looked at
20 the old map, as a matter of fact. There is both a hand
21 wash and an apron wash marked beside each other, beside the
22 legging transfer platform. The impression you were trying
23 to give us last time was that both those facilities were on
24 the legging and transfer platform, was it not?
25 A. I do not think I say anywhere here that the apron wash
26 was on the platform.
27
28 Q. The hand wash is not marked in the right place either, is
29 it on the old map?
30 A. I have not got the old map here.
31
32 Q. I see. Forget the old map then. The man who does the
33 sticking, whether it be one man or two -- and you and
34 Mr. Bone do not agree about that -- the man who does the
35 sticking goes and sterilizes his knife after each sticking
36 and takes a new knife from the sterilizer, does he not?
37 A. Well, he did not at the time, and that was one -- like
38 I said this morning, that was one of his complaints, that
39 he could not get to the apron wash and sterilizer -- that
40 is along the wall, against the wall, lairage wall --
41 because of the cramped conditions that he was working in.
42
43 Q. So far as the hide pull chain sterilizers are concerned --
44 I put it in the plural because Mr. Bone says in fact there
45 are two -- you were not aware of their existence or you
46 simply did not see them working; which was it?
47 A. No, I was not aware of their existence, I did not see
48 them working, and the lack of them was mentioned in two
49 separate inspectors' reports, and that was one of the
50 reasons why I paid attention to it.
51
52 Q. I noticed you said that. You do not remember the dates of
53 those reports, do you?
54 A. No.
55
56 Q. Where were these reports when you saw them?
57 A. They were at the -- I read the reports both in my
58 office and -- I spent two days at the local Environmental
59 Health council offices going through all the old reports on
60 Jarrets, at their request; and I either saw them there or
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