Day 101 - 10 Mar 95 - Page 45

     
     1        problems such as bones in the product or meat hygiene,
     2        things like that?
     3        A.  It is important for the prevention of bones.  Obviously
     4        the ideal thing is not to have them in the product rather
     5        than take them out once they are there.  So I think the
     6        visits made by McDonald's, especially to the deboning lines
     7        and speaking to the inspectors on the lines and the
     8        supervisors on the lines to sort of reinforce the fact that
     9        we do not want bones in our products, is an important part
    10        of the visit.  But I would not think that that was the main
    11        reason for going down there at all.  When the initial
    12        equipment was being commissioned there was certainly a lot
    13        of time spent working with Sun Valley in getting that
    14        equipment up and running.  Maybe that is what Mr. Oakley
    15        was referring to.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You say that if there is a foreign object,
    18        not that a bone is a very foreign, it seems to me, to
    19        chicken, but you say if there is a foreign object or a
    20        complaint about it, it is sent to you.  Do you mean you
         will get bits of chicken bone sent to you?
    22        A.  Yes.
    23
    24   Q.   What sort of size do they vary from?
    25        A.  They usually are around about -- I would guess they
    26        vary from an inch down to about half an inch.  If they are
    27        in a Chicken Nugget obviously they can be no larger than
    28        the size of the Nugget.  In the chicken sandwich patty
    29        which is larger, you have the potential for a slightly
    30        larger bone, but obviously the larger the bone the higher
    31        the possibility of its detection through visual inspection
    32        or mechanical inspection, so we do not tend to get large
    33        bones.
    34
    35   Q.   But people do actually complain about finding a bone in a
    36        piece of chicken?
    37        A.  Yes, they complain.  They send those back.  Where we
    38        can at the end of the month when we do a summary we send
    39        those bones back to Sun Valley and what they do is they
    40        determine what bones they are, what part of the bird the
         bones have come from, and they could then go back on to the
    42        deboning line and perhaps reinforce the training of the
    43        particular people on those particular areas.
    44
    45   MS. STEEL:  Can you just explain how 27 and a half million birds
    46        worked out?  You put that in your statement, can you tell
    47        us how you work that out?
    48
    49   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  27 and a half for Europe.
    50        A.  For Europe, that is it is calculated on the volume of 
    51        product that is sold to McDonald's.  So Sun Valley 
    52        obviously know how much product they sell to McDonald's. 
    53        They know what weight of that product is chicken meat; they
    54        know what percentage of that is chicken breast meat, and
    55        then it is factored back to get the number of birds because
    56        you know the yield of breast meat from your average bird.
    57
    58   MS. STEEL:  How many times have you visited Oasters?
    59        A.  I would guess half a dozen times.
    60