Day 115 - 06 Apr 95 - Page 22

     
     1         -- on day 20 which is 28th July, on page 71, starting at
     2        line 6 -- he actually said he is not 100 per cent certain
     3        that they did not regain consciousness or that they might
     4        have done.
     5
     6   THE WITNESS:  Can I say, my Lord, that I understood
     7        Mr. Rampton's question to go up to the point where they
     8        were in the collecting area.
     9
    10   MR. RAMPTON:  That is right.
    11
    12   THE WITNESS:  Prior to stunning.
    13
    14   MR. RAMPTON:  I had gone up to the collecting area and I had
    15        gone into the stunning pen.  I was dealing, my Lord, as
    16        Ms. Steel ought to have understood and I think Dr. Long
    17        did, with the way in which the pigs are handled.  I started
    18        by saying that he will have noticed that it is usually done
    19        in groups of three or more often two.
    20
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let us carry on.
    22
    23   MR. RAMPTON:  I do not believe it can have been much clearer.
    24        (To the witness):  There is one mistake I think you have
    25        just made (or it may not have been a mistake, I do not
    26        know), Dr. Long, you said that until recently it had been
    27        recommended by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, amongst
    28        others, that animals should be stunned singularly; that is
    29        not right, is it?
    30        A.  What I understand is the recommendation that they
    31        should be killed, and this is a word that one could play
    32        with, perhaps, because there are two operations in most
    33        cases, stunning and sticking.  But if you take the word
    34        "killed" for the moment, they should not be killed within
    35        sight of one another.  This has always been, if I might use
    36        the word, a bone of contention and difficulty with pigs.
    37
    38        It is now being more accepted that with certain animals,
    39        possibly with pigs, and in certain circumstances there may
    40        be less stress if the animals are done singularly or in
         groups, but not too big a group.  In my experience, in
    42        looking at this, because we have had a lot of experience,
    43        but I have to say that this has been looked at particularly
    44        with deer latterly.  That is not exactly relevant to this
    45        case except that, of course, we try to derive the all the
    46        information we can from all species.
    47
    48   Q.   The law is that cows or steers or heifers, or whatever,
    49        cattle, must be stunned singularly, is it not?
    50        A.  They must be killed, as I understand it.  Again, I did 
    51        not have (indecipherable) of all of this but, as 
    52        I understand it, they have to be killed out of sight of one 
    53        another.  Now, if you take killing to embrace both stunning
    54        and sticking, that is one thing.  If you take the sticking
    55        as being the killing, because the stunning, it might be
    56        argued, does not actually kill the animal, then one would
    57        have to argue that through and I think it is debatable.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Effectively, if you are using a captive bolt
    60        pistol, if the provision is that one animal is not killed