Day 109 - 28 Mar 95 - Page 22
1 the modern broiler is a defective animal, if you like. Dr.
2 Pattison used the word "designed" when he described the
3 broiler, the today's chicken. We, in our literature, have
4 used the phrase "designed to suffer", and I am not
5 suggesting that has been done very deliberately from a
6 vindictive point of view, but I think it has been part of
7 the process; they have resulted in a bird that suffers.
8
9 Q. If you still have the -- I do not know whether this is
10 necessary, but the relevant paragraph is paragraph 45 of
11 the report on the Farm Animal Welfare Council Report?
12 A. Where is that?
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will just make a note of that.
15
16 MS. STEEL: Right. It just says: "The Council concludes that
17 the current level of leg problems in broilers is
18 unacceptable. We recommend that steps should be taken to
19 ensure that there is a significant reduction in the numbers
20 and severity of leg problems. It will be the
21 responsibility of the industry to achieve this subjective,
22 and the Council intends to look at this aspect of broiler
23 production again in five years' time when significant
24 improvements should be apparent. If no reduction in leg
25 problems is found, we may recommend the introduction of
26 legislation to ensure the required improvements".
27 A. If I could just make this comment?
28
29 Q. Yes.
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am sorry, you might be sitting around the
32 fire having a chat. Do keep your voices up. What did you
33 want to say, Mrs. Druce?
34 A. I wanted to comment that, according to Dr. Pattison's
35 evidence, Sun Valley's partial solution to leg weakness was
36 the routine, or is the routine administration of
37 antibiotics in the first, I think the first week of their
38 lives, the birds' lives. I would say that was a very
39 dangerous road to go along, because I am very aware from
40 all the reading I have done that antibiotic resistance is
41 emerging very, very much in many, many drugs, obviously
42 partly through over-use in the human population but also
43 very much because of over-use in animal husbandry, and
44 I contend that -- well, it is obvious that historically the
45 intensive farming systems that we see today have gone
46 alongside the discovery of antibiotics, and without this,
47 without that discovery they could not have taken off; there
48 is no way that these massive numbers of birds, for
49 instance, could be kept without frequent recourse to
50 antibiotics. This, to my mind, is completely immoral,
51 because it is not actually life saving in the sense that
52 when you give a child antibiotics because it might become
53 deaf, or whatever, this is a known system. It is known
54 that the system is unhealthy and the massive numbers --
55 I mean, for instance, no farmer with 50 thousand birds is
56 going to take a chance that respiratory infection is
57 breaking out. There is blanket use of antibiotics
58 instantly, and this, I think, is not the solution. Sun
59 Valley's solution of giving antibiotics routinely is, to my
60 mind, irresponsible.
