Day 108 - 27 Mar 95 - Page 13

     
     1        A.  Yes, I think it would be of interest.
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, here we run into trouble, I think.  I saw
     4        the video over the weekend.  It is a compilation by,
     5        apparently, some people at or near the University of
     6        Cambridge.  It contains a commentary by voice-over which
     7        one might think -- I am not objecting to your Lordship
     8        seeing it, I am putting out what I hope are some
     9        preliminary observations about the value of this evidence
    10         -- which contains -----
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I do not have to hear the commentary.  In
    13        fact, in other cases where videos have been shown, the
    14        commentary normally has been turned off or turned down.
    15
    16   MR. RAMPTON:  Your Lordship will not be able to avoid hearing
    17        the commentary.  It is a monologue.
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But can it not be turned down?  You can still
    20        hear it?
    21
    22   MR. RAMPTON:  The film is difficult to understand without the
    23        commentary.  My Lord, really, the trouble is this:  I have
    24        just been looking back at the judgment your Lordship
    25        supplied us with earlier.
    26
    27        Here we have a lady whose scientific qualifications are, it
    28        would appear, nil.  If what the people at Cambridge are
    29        saying, or appear to say, on this film or as represented as
    30        having found on this film, more accurately, is to stand as
    31        evidence in this case, they would have to be called as
    32        witnesses.
    33
    34        I do not mind your Lordship seeing it, but it is quite
    35        interesting in a way, it raises as many questions as it
    36        answers, but it is not conceivably, in my submission,
    37        capable of standing as evidence.
    38
    39   MS. STEEL:  I do not really understand that.  As I understand
    40        it, experts are entitled to refer to scientific documents
         and this is a form of a scientific document.
    42
    43   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I do not follow that at the moment, but
    44        I wonder whether you are on the right tack anyway.
    45        Expertise can be either learned by book studies, or it can
    46        arise from practical experience or, indeed, one's
    47        connections within a particular area, and I have to say
    48        I thought that Mrs. Druce was going to seek to help me on
    49        the basis that the expertise which she has built up,
    50        particularly since 1984, because she refers to first-hand 
    51        experience, studying scientific literature, talking to 
    52        experts and following the industry's own literature 
    53        closely, visiting farms, market slaughters houses,
    54        observing the condition of processed birds on supermarket
    55        shelves, caring for live birds and, in the course of that,
    56        studying their behaviour and health status, and I thought
    57        that you were going to ask Mrs. Druce to tell me about
    58        certain matters based on that.
    59
    60   MS. STEEL:  This is relevant to her experience but expertise is