Day 128 - 24 May 95 - Page 07
1 were not Head of Food Safety, was there someone who was, or
2 had there been someone who was, whatever their title, who
3 exercised that function?
4 A. No, it was just an integral part of QA. There was no
5 particular person.
6
7 MS. STEEL: Your post was created in response to the Food
8 Safety Act, or whatever it was called?
9 A. My role was created by the request of the three
10 regional managers to help develop an Operation's response
11 to the Food Safety Act, the Control of Substances Hazardous
12 to Health Regulations and the Electricity at Work
13 Regulations and, also, as I explained, to gain some
14 qualifications and bring a safety professional
15 qualification to McDonald's.
16
17 Q. Burns are one of the more common accidents at McDonald's,
18 are they not?
19 A. They are one of the most, more common outcomes of
20 accidents, yes.
21
22 Q. If you turn to pink volume XII, tab 57M, on the sheet 4,
23 where would burns come in in that chart?
24 A. Well, the chart shows types of accidents. As I have
25 just said, burns are an outcome to an accident, so you
26 would not expect to see them on there. They would -- if,
27 for example, if we did a breakdown of the type of injuries
28 we get in our restaurants, they would occur on that. But
29 the sort of thing that is going to cause burns is if you
30 strike against some hot equipment, and also the manual
31 handling category, and the harmful substance category also
32 includes shortening. But having thought overnight on the
33 manual handling and why they are so different between 1991
34 and 1993, I have remembered back, and one of the main
35 differences there was that in 1992 we had a programme of
36 introducing a new type of grill that became available to us
37 that was not available, before called a clamshell grill.
38 The advantage of that was it had a lid on it, and that
39 meant that should somebody slip or lose their balance and
40 put their hand on the grill, they now put it on the lid of
41 grill, as opposed to the grill surface itself.
42
43 Q. So the rate of burns went down after that?
44 A. So the burns in that manual handling category came
45 down, but that is a good example of something that just was
46 not available to us before 1992. It was something new
47 that, yes, had been developed from a cooking standpoint,
48 but also had a safety spinoff as well.
49
50 Q. An electric shock would be the outcome of an accident,
51 would it not?
52 A. Yes, it would, but because this is based on RIDDOR
53 categories, one of the RIDDOR categories is an electric
54 shock. Now, the shock in terms of the tingle would be an
55 overcome, but the outcome of an electric shock could also
56 be an electric burn or ------
57
58 Q. Why do you not keep any statistics on burns?
59 A. The database we have which takes the information off
60 the F2508, the reporting form, does indicate whether they
