Day 096 - 03 Mar 95 - Page 14

     
     1   Q.   For your individual company?
     2        A.  Yes, for our individual company.  Our own suppliers
     3        have very much gone where we have led.  We do have seminars
     4        with our suppliers etc. and it is not a one-way
     5        transmission.  It is definitely discussion takes place and
     6        over the years they have come very much down the way that
     7        we have been thinking etc and, likewise, if they have had
     8        better ideas than us, we have gone down their way of
     9        thinking.  So, I would say that our suppliers are very much
    10        down the Suffolk housing road.
    11
    12   Q.   So even now they are not all using the Suffolk housing?
    13        A.  No, it would be quite wrong to say everyone is.
    14
    15   Q.   Do some of them use fully enclosed fattening houses?
    16        A.  What do you mean by "fully enclosed"?  How you have
    17        said it there, if that is fully enclosed, you have almost
    18        got a suffocation system.
    19
    20   Q.   No, obviously no, but without access to outdoor dunging
         yards?
    22        A.  There are still some that are in existence in our
    23        industry, but our buyers have instructions not to buy from
    24        such systems.
    25
    26   Q.   That is in your specifications, is it?
    27        A.  Yes, that is.
    28
    29   Q.   How long has that been in your specifications?
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  When did that come in?
    32        A.  It has been an intention of ours to try to buy such
    33        pigs for the last, I would say, 15 years.  That has been
    34        written in various specifications within the last 10 years.
    35
    36   MS. STEEL:   That has been standard in your specifications for
    37        the last 10 years?
    38        A.  Yes, but when I say it was not written before, because
    39        at times one does try to get a commercial advantage, and if
    40        you can actually get your buyers to go and buy the pigs
         that you want from certain farms, where you know the
    42        conditions meet with your requirements so that your
    43        competitors who are selling to the retail market do not
    44        know where you are coming from, you do not always write
    45        down those exact specifications early on in your plans.
    46
    47   Q.   Over the last 10 years some of the pigs that you have
    48        purchased either from some of the farming systems where you
    49        pass out the pigs for others to grow, or the ones you just
    50        buy in from the slaughterhouse, some of those had come from 
    51        farms where the pigs did not have access to outdoor dunging 
    52        areas? 
    53        A.  Not on our own contract farms or on our own farms.
    54        There is a possibility in the past that we could have
    55        bought from farms years ago with that system, yes.
    56
    57   Q.   Within the last 10 years?
    58        A.  The instruction has been no, so I can only honestly
    59        say, I would say it is unlikely.
    60