Day 095 - 02 Mar 95 - Page 09
1 discuss it. This is well ahead of everybody else.
2
3 Q. If you cannot speculate ------
4 A. The minimum standards are met by far. This is high
5 level technology that nobody else is using.
6
7 Q. If you cannot speculate on what is behind all of this, you
8 do not actually know whether it is something that might
9 affect food safety then?
10 A. To some degree, yes, I helped develop these forms.
11 I know the suppliers. I know the people that work, the
12 people, Linda Aenkel, with her, her desk is besides mine.
13 We communicate a lot so I can make -- what I can say what
14 I tell you is because I know. What I do not want to
15 speculate is because I am not sure.
16
17 Q. Is it right, going away from these documents now -----
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Have you finished with them or are you going
20 to come back?
21
22 MS. STEEL: No.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Could you just tell me again? I have got the
25 two sheets we have looked at so far and I have got the
26 HACCP definitions, but there should be another document in
27 addition to that in that section.
28
29 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, there should, I am sorry. I have
30 found a spare one. It is my fault. I had squirrelled away
31 two sets. If your Lordship would not mind putting that one
32 behind a pro forma for 1991 and put it behind the other
33 documents in 1A.
34
35 MS. STEEL (To the witness): Is it correct that under the new
36 USDA inspection regulations there is no maximum number of
37 defects per carcass?
38 A. What do you call "a defect"?
39
40 Q. A defect now counts as a smear only if it measures from 3
41 to 7.9 centimetres?
42 A. Of what?
43
44 Q. That is the size of the defect.
45 A. But size -- you have to tell me what defect.
46
47 Q. Do you want to explain to us what the regulations are then?
48 A. Yes, I can tell you. If it is faecal matter it is zero
49 tolerance, none whatsoever. If it is things like, let us
50 say, that are trivial that does not cause a safety risk,
51 that could be, that is a defect. What is critical for this
52 is that those things that are, that could represent a
53 safety risk, there is a limit. There is a very specified
54 limit. If an animal is bruised, if it is diseased, there
55 is zero tolerance for that.
56
57 Q. Is it not right that hemorrhages have to be bigger than two
58 centimetres to be scored?
59 A. A bruise, I do not know remember the exact size, but it
60 could very well be that size, yes.
