Day 114 - 04 Apr 95 - Page 38
1 I would be grateful if would you do your best to do so.
2
3 THE WITNESS: I will.
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5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: 2 o'clock.
6
7 (Luncheon Adjournment)
8
9 MR. MORRIS: Dr. Long, very briefly, well, no, not very briefly,
10 but what are the main concerns, as regarding pig or eating
11 pork, of transmission of disease, of bacteria, or whatever
12 infection, from the slaughtered animal to the human?
13 A. Bacterial infections would be salmonella, particularly,
14 and disease particularly concerned with pigs which is
15 called yersinia. There are being introduced special
16 arrangements to try to prevent the spread of that. One of
17 the systems that is being introduced, particularly in
18 Scandinavia, is that during slaughtering you obviously have
19 the gut that you have to take out. The gut is full of
20 faeces, partially digested food and so on.
21
22 Q. In the same way as the cattle?
23 A. It is the same for cattle, any animals, yes. It is the
24 same thing. There are two exits for this, provided you
25 have not ruptured the gut in butchering the animal, that
26 will add extra exits for this material, the top end is the
27 oesophagus, really, and you can clip that off or close it
28 off with a bung.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I know about the basics of any risk which
31 there may be.
32 A. I am just telling .....
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am a bit cautious about this evidence
35 from this witness. I know he has certain expertise which
36 I will explore with him in due course when I cross-examine
37 him, but I am not at all certain that I feel that he is
38 qualified to give evidence about food safety. We have had
39 Mr. North who, obviously, was an expert called on behalf of
40 the Defendants. I am very cautious about this witness's
41 capacity to give evidence on this topic.
42
43 MR. MORRIS: I would disagree with Mr. Rampton.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you know where you are going in relation
46 to this?
47
48 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You said very shortly and then, well, not
51 really very shortly, and I think you probably could take it
52 very shortly. I will bear in mind that there may well be
53 comment in due course as to the extent to which Dr. Long is
54 an expert or no. I am going to let you go on, but I think
55 you could probably take it in headlines and then we will
56 see if there is anything new really.
57
58 MR. MORRIS: Yes. (To the witness): I am just trying to get
59 you to do the same thing you did with cattle as for pigs,
60 but we do not have to repeat the basic explanations of, you
