Day 106 - 23 Mar 95 - Page 12
1 not by any means the only control of multiplication. You
2 can bring into play other mechanisms." I would like to
3 know what they are.
4
5 MR. MORRIS: Is what you have been talking about one of those
6 other mechanisms?
7 A. That is one mechanism, competitive exclusion,
8 essentially, to give it a modern name. That is, in fact, a
9 developing science now. The old tradition has been taken
10 on board. For instance, in poultry flocks, just to develop
11 the theme, there are various mixtures. One can feed
12 chickens mixtures of live bacteria which will include the
13 other bacteria. You are using the same principle in terms
14 of certain cheeses -----
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you just give me the head lines of what
17 the other mechanisms are? Then I am going to leave it to
18 Mr. Morris, Ms. Steel and Mr. Rampton to take it any
19 further if they wish, but I would like just to have the
20 headlines. I have suggested keeping the meat cool enough
21 to avoid unnecessary multiplication.
22 A. Yes, that is head one.
23
24 Q. Cooking it to a temperature which will mean that the
25 organism reaches its thermal death point; if you can just
26 give me headlines of what the other mechanisms are?
27 A. If you call the next one head three, let us call the
28 next one head three, let us call it competitive exclusion,
29 i.e. using bacteria of one type to exclude others. Head
30 four would be acidity; the more acid it is -----
31
32 Q. What, in the processing?
33 A. Quite so. In fact, meat when killed develops an
34 inherent acidity. Then you can use chemical processes such
35 as fermentation to also achieve like effect.
36
37 Q. Anything else? I do not want you to expand because I am
38 going to leave it to the parties to take it any further if
39 they wish?
40 A. One could add radiation.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is not terribly popular with the public.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: So, just to go back to the cross-contamination
45 point, if the salmonella burden in live cattle is something
46 less than 1 per cent?
47 A. Yes.
48
49 Q. But your case would be it is still present?
50 A. It is still present -- yes, it is present. There is no
51 doubt that it is present in the cattle population.
52
53 Q. So what is the effect of the techniques of the food chain
54 associated with McDonald's on that small presence in the UK
55 beef herd?
56 A. The global answer to that is that it would magnify the
57 incidence through the system, so that you would expect in
58 the general order that by the time the product came through
59 the other end of the processing chain the salmonella burden
60 would be higher in terms of the proportion of items
