Day 217 - 09 02 96 - Page 63
DAY 217
1 daily basis for a month, taken by the two boning room
2 supervisors at the door of chill room one as the meat comes
3 out -- it is the nearest carcass to the door and,
4 therefore, presumably, the warmest -- every day, at half
5 hour intervals, and you never get anywhere near 7 degrees.
6 It puzzles me where your 7 plus comes from.
7 A. Well, it puzzles me as well because the temperatures
8 that I recorded on the despatch bay and in that sorting
9 area were sometimes up to 14 degrees. You can go and look
10 at the log books of the trucks that leave Jarrets, and
11 I went as far as calling a truck back that had left without
12 my permission, the plant. It had been loaded with
13 carcasses that were all about ten degrees Celsius, and we
14 can find that log book there. If you -- you have access to
15 Jarrets' papers. I am sure that that is there as well, and
16 we detained the truck there until I had made sure that the
17 trucks' cooling equipment had cooled the carcasses down to
18 an acceptable level.
19
20 There was a generally acknowledged problem of carcass --
21 high carcass temperatures at Jarrets during the time that
22 I worked there. Mr. Bob Jarret and me, we worked together
23 on several occasions trying to solve this problem, as
24 I have told before, the different suggestions we have had
25 to solve this problem. I find it very -- just as puzzling
26 that some carcasses would have acceptable temperatures and
27 the others not.
28
29 Q. But we are talking, are we not, about two completely
30 different things, Mrs. Hovi. You are talking about in-bone
31 carcasses destined very often for continental buyers who
32 like their meat better hung and, therefore, left at a
33 higher temperature before and during despatch. That is one
34 set of meat. The other set of meat is Mr. Walker of McKeys
35 who likes to receive his meat at not more than 7 degrees
36 when it arrives in its box. They are two completely
37 different things, are they not?
38 A. Yes, they are, but all these carcasses came from the
39 same chillers. You cannot chill carcasses in a different
40 way if you are chilling them in the same chiller, and you
41 cannot tell one carcass that you are going to go down to
42 that temperature.
43
44 As far as the continental customers are concerned, it does
45 surprise -- there is no -- there is an overall regulation
46 within the EU that carcasses before they are despatched
47 from any slaughter house, whether they are going to the
48 boning plant or whether they are going to be sold as whole
49 carcasses, their temperatures must be below 7 degrees. It
50 has nothing to do with the meat quality. It has only to do
51 with the growing temperatures of the pathogenic organisms.
52
53 Q. I am sorry, but I am not concerned with EC or with
54 continental customers, save in so far as it impacts on
55 McDonald's requirements through McKey. You understand
56 that?
57 A. Yes, but you did comment on the -- in my opinion, you
58 were suggesting that the carcasses left Jarrets at the
59 temperatures they did because the customers required them
60 to do so.
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