Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 12

     
     1        hygiene is concerned at an abattoir.  It is fairly common
     2        place.
     3
     4   Q.   Hang on a second.  When you say you are looking for these
     5        various diseases, whatever, are of those diseases not
     6        prevalent in cattle stock in general, or are some more
     7        prevalent than others or what?
     8        A.  Well, the diseases I mentioned are the ones that would
     9        be concerned in the UK at the moment.  There are obviously
    10        a host of zoonotic diseases that have been either
    11        eradicated in this country or are under such strict control
    12        that we would not worry about them.  My experience in other
    13        countries shows that under a different type of endemic
    14        conditions, you would obviously worry about different
    15        diseases, but the ones I mentioned would be the ones that
    16        we would have to worry about here mainly.
    17
    18   Q.   Because?
    19        A.  Because they are prevalent in this country.  There are
    20        incidents of all these diseases.  I would have worried
         about TB as well since we have a serious epidemic of TB
    22        going on particularly in the southwest in the catchment
    23        area.
    24
    25   Q.   TB in humans or in cattle?
    26        A.  TB in cattle, but it is transmissible to humans.  If
    27        I carry on as far as what happens, what I am worried about
    28        inside the abattoir is concerned, as I said, I would be
    29        worried about the contamination by the contents of ------
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You told us about that.  You have said that
    32        is your biggest worry?
    33        A.  There we would obviously be worried about the microbes
    34        which cause food poisoning which are often inhabitants of
    35        the gut of cattle.  We are basically talking about cattle
    36        here I understand and those microbes -- I do not know
    37        whether I need to go into that list.
    38
    39        We would talk about salmonella, we would talk about
    40        campylobacter, listeria, we would talk about clostridium
         perfringens, we would talk about staphylococci but
    42        staphylococci as originating basically from the skin of
    43        both humans and animals.
    44
    45        Then, obviously, after the slaughtering process has
    46        happened, I would hope and assume ------
    47
    48   MR. MORRIS:  Could we just go to, while we on that subject, the
    49        German language list of ----
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What is this? 
    52 
    53   MR. MORRIS:  If you remember, it was the list of pathogens
    54        relevant to red meat.  It is in the supplementary bundle.
    55
    56   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No. 5?
    57
    58   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
    59
    60   MR. MORRIS:  This was given to us by Ms. Hovi.  Have you got the