Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 15
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: We will take our five minute break there.
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4 (Short Adjournment)
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6 MS. STEEL: Can I just say, I have not had time to go through
7 all the transcripts of Dr. Gonzales' evidence, and really,
8 basically, he seemed to say one thing one minute and then
9 say another thing the next minute. I think, unless you
10 went through it extremely carefully, you would not actually
11 be able to pick out exactly what the situation was, and,
12 obviously, I just do not have time to do that. So I have
13 got a very few notes which I actually made quite a long
14 time ago.
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16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Why not just tell me those? As I have
17 tried to say before, you cannot dig up every point which
18 you might make in your own favour, and if that situation
19 leads you to getting out whichever main ones come into your
20 mind it is probably none the worse for that.
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22 MS. STEEL: Right. I mean, there were various things about
23 broiler chickens. On day 92, page 44, line 57 he said that
24 20,000 to 25,000 chickens would be in a shed twenty foot by
25 200 foot. Then I think you asked him a question about it.
26 He said, "It should be 40 foot by 200 feet." That was on
27 day 92, page 59, line ten. Then at line 19 on the same
28 page he said that it was 20,000 square foot, and at line 38
29 on the same page he said that the stocking density for the
30 birds was 36.1 kilograms per metre square. That would be
31 for about 22,000 birds. He did say on day 92, page 70,
32 lines 13 and 30, that in general you could make the
33 assumption that chickens reared indoors suffer from more
34 leg problems than those reared outdoors.
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36 The only other note that I have to hand is that he said
37 that it does not matter to McDonald's if chickens are
38 debeaked, and that was on day 92, page 42, line 21.
39 Obviously, it is the industry standard to debeak.
40 McDonald's will, no doubt, be getting chickens that have
41 been - or, in the process of rearing chickens and producing
42 eggs for McDonald's products chickens will be debeaked
43 because it is the industry standard, or certainly was at
44 the time of the alleged libel. And McDonald's did not have
45 any objection to it, so -- yes, he said it did not matter
46 to them.
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48 If I just say in relation to that, that obviously we
49 consider debeaking to be an extremely inhumane practice and
50 that Mrs. Druce did actually give evidence about the system
51 being so unnatural, that debeaking becomes a vital part of
52 the system, and that, in her opinion, was totally wrong.
53 Day 108, page 36, line 49. There is other evidence there
54 about debeaking in general. (Pause)
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56 To go on to pigs -- Mr. Morris says he has some points to
57 bring up about chickens. It might actually be sensible to
58 do it now, then I can have a bit of break from speaking
59 anyway.
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