Day 100 - 09 Mar 95 - Page 08
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2 MS. STEEL: What about other complaints, other than bones?
3 A. The most common other complaint would be cartilage
4 again in chicken products, cartilage or gristle.
5
6 Q. How many of those are you pretty certain the complaint is
7 justified?
8 A. Yes, I would say that the vast majority of those, we
9 would say, were definitely justified, yes.
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11 Q. That would be true for the bone complaints as well?
12 A. Yes, it would.
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14 Q. Not does this not crop up with beef products as well and
15 the pork products?
16 A. We get the occasional bone in the beef burgers; the
17 difference being the beef patties are actually minced so
18 any bones in there would be ground up and there is an
19 eliminator, that we discussed yesterday, after the grinding
20 system which eliminates the vast majority of those bone
21 chips, but there are a very small percentage that gets
22 through and do come back by the way of complaints.
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24 Q. So the complaints that you get about that type of thing,
25 you would find they would justified as well?
26 A. Yes, we would have no reason to disbelieve them.
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28 Q. Then what other types of complaints do you get in relation
29 to foreign objects? Plastic bits is a common one, is it
30 not?
31 A. We do not get very much plastic. We get a lot of
32 people thinking they have found plastic in fish and, in
33 fact, it is a fish bone. They can look very similar.
34
35 Q. I think Mr. Walker mentioned about investigating a lot of
36 bits of plastic in the beef products?
37 A. With the meat, the only bit of plastic that is in the
38 system, all the production facility, all the equipment that
39 is used is stainless steel or metal, so that it gets picked
40 up by the metal detector, but they do actually tag the
41 carcasses with plastic meat tags. Sometimes they can go
42 through the system undiscovered, yes.
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44 Q. Then on top of that you get complaints about things like
45 hair or?
46 A. Yes, we get hair complaints.
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48 Q. Worms as well?
49 A. It is almost impossible again to tell where they
50 originate from. They could be the customers' hair dropping
51 in as the customers eats it; they could be from the person
52 preparing the food. We obviously take precautions in the
53 production facilities to prevent that with the use of hair
54 nets and hats. We use hats in the restaurants as well.
55
56 Q. Has the company had complaints about chicken cysts?
57 A. I have never heard of a complaint about a chicken cyst.
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59 Q. Not a single one?
60 A. No.
