Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 12

     
     1
     2   MS. STEEL:   Before I go on to battery chickens, which will not
     3        take very long, I just wanted to draw some parts of Miss
     4        Watkins' evidence to the court's attention.  This was on
     5        day 200 and she related how on 10th September 1995 she had
     6        inspected and filmed conditions at one of Sun Valley
     7        Poultry Limited's private broiler chicken growing sites,
     8        somewhere in Monkswood near Usk in Gwent.  She said that
     9        upon entering one of the chicken sheds she found that many
    10        of the birds had been left to suffer in the most
    11        distressing conditions, she found that many of the birds
    12        were suffering with grotesque hip and leg deformities, some
    13        so crippled that they were unable to stand, some birds were
    14        dying, unable to drag themselves to the feed and water
    15        points.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Are you looking at a particular page number?
    18
    19   MS. STEEL:   Yes, sorry, page 2 of the transcript. She said this
    20        putrid smelling windowless shed contained many thousands of
         birds, there were between two to four weeks old.  She said
    22        that the smell almost took her breath away, and that it was
    23        very, very hot in the shed, unbearably hot, and it was also
    24        humid.
    25
    26        She took video footage, which we saw in court, and we could
    27        all see the appalling conditions of at least some of the
    28        chickens which were clearly incapable of walking, and
    29        certainly if they had been the ones surveyed by Dr. Gregory
    30        they would have come out with a gait score of 4 or 5.
    31
    32        She made a reference at the bottom of page 4 of the
    33        transcript, line 57, she said, this was while the video was
    34        being shown, and she said that you could see two birds
    35        which could not walk, they were lying on their sides, and
    36        she referred to those ones in particular.
    37
    38        She also referred on page 7, line 21....  Sorry, no, before
    39        I go on to that one, page 5, line 23, she referred to some
    40        different birds, one underneath the hopper which was dying,
         and then there is a little crippled bird there trying to
    42        get to the water.  This is a different bird again with its
    43        leg sticking up.  You saw the grotesque angle that the leg
    44        was sticking out at.
    45
    46        On page 7, line 21, you asked her about how many disabled
    47        chickens there were, and she said that there were just too
    48        many to say.  She said the ones that she managed to film
    49        were the ones that were in a clearing, and that everywhere
    50        she looked there were chickens with grotesque deformities 
    51        and chickens that could not walk and were unable to drag 
    52        themselves. 
    53
    54        And I should just point out that she did say at the start
    55        of her evidence that she had worked for six years as a
    56        senior kennel maid at the RSPCA and that included looking
    57        after chickens so she did have experience of chickens, it
    58        was not her first time with them.
    59
    60        Mr. Rampton's cross-examination of Miss Watkins basically