Day 107 - 24 Mar 95 - Page 03
1 I would rather you said so, but I am just seeing if you can
2 offer a view.
3 A. Well, my Lord, the reason I do not know is because the
4 information is not available. There is simply no
5 structured, organised sampling of the national herd and,
6 therefore, there are no reliable data on which any estimate
7 could be made.
8
9 Q. The next matter is this: You said there had been surveys
10 in relation to pigs and you said there were 15 to 25 per
11 cent with salmonella, and then a few questions and answers
12 later on you said that that figure was in terms of
13 sausages?
14 A. That was sausage meat, my Lord, not pigs themselves,
15 sausage meat.
16
17 Q. No. Do you have any figures of any reliability at all as
18 to carcasses or deboned pig meat?
19 A. No, my Lord. Again, the qualification, and this is my
20 area of professional study and it is a cause of some
21 considerable complaint by myself and my colleagues, is that
22 there are no reliable data. The surveillance system
23 actually spends a lot of money doing a lot of erratic
24 sampling but has never been able to organise itself
25 properly to do a structured national survey and provide
26 data on which we can -----
27
28 Q. But there has been some kind of survey in relation to
29 sausages, has there?
30 A. What you got from me was data from a British Medical
31 Journal reported survey, and we do have these occasional,
32 erratic surveys as fancy takes a particular group, and they
33 go out and buy X number of bits of food and sample them.
34 Of course, in fact, the sampling errors in that again
35 dictates caution in that one glibly says: "25 per cent",
36 but the variation on sampling error could give you a 10
37 per cent plus or minus.
38
39 Q. The final thing I want to ask you about which is a loose
40 end in my mind from yesterday, are the pathogens which we
41 have mentioned which, essentially, for all practical
42 purposes originate in the gut of the animal, and I would
43 also like you to tell me if you know which of the relevant
44 ones may also be in the gut of human beings, because
45 I assume if a pathogen may be in the gut of human beings,
46 if the human being who is involved somewhere in the food
47 chain, to put it rather euphemistically, does not observe
48 proper standards of personal hygiene, then the pathogen may
49 get transferred from them to the meat?
50 A. Yes.
51
52 Q. I want to make sure, because this is an area new to me so I
53 do not want to make some fundamental error on something as
54 basic as that, salmonella is in the gut of the animal?
55 A. Indeed.
56
57 Q. What about humans?
58 A. Commonly in humans. I have seen a variety of
59 surveys -----
60
