Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 02
1 Tuesday, 29th October, 1996
2
3 MS. STEEL: Can I just say, I am sorry we are late. I thought
4 it would be quicker to get some photocopies of what I have
5 typed up and I did not realise it was quite as late as it
6 is. If I hand up.... (Handed) I am actually going to
7 expand on that and kind of interlink other parts as well.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Am I supposed to have two copies? Have I
10 got two copies?
11
12 MS. STEEL: One was for the stenographers. I cannot actually
13 remember where I was.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let me tell you from my note. What you had
16 really got to was the average number of units on a farm.
17 Five or six typical, three people, large units, large
18 farms, 13 units, typically five people. So there were a
19 tiny number of people with lots of other duties, as well as
20 responsible for checking a huge number of birds and there
21 was no way they could give adequate attention to the health
22 and welfare of the birds with so few staff.
23
24 MS. STEEL: Thank you. That is very helpful.
25
26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What are you going to do then? Are you
27 going to read parts and then expand?
28
29 MS. STEEL: Yes. I want to go back over some of the parts that
30 were referred to yesterday, just to add the things that Dr.
31 Gregory said about them. So I am just trying to sort out
32 my papers. (Pause) For some reason I cannot find the
33 notes that I was going through yesterday. I can probably
34 do it from memory anyway. I mean, if we do the hatchery
35 sheet first.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
38
39 MS. STEEL: If I just read out what is on here, and I will add
40 bits where appropriate. Dr. Gregory described how
41 unhatched eggs were put through macerators, a pair of
42 rotating rollers. That was on day 19, page 11, line 28.
43 And that chicks could be macerated alive. That is 19, 12,
44 2. Then for the unwanted chicks which had been hatched
45 out, he described the process of gassing them using carbon
46 dioxide at the Sun Valley plant.
47
48 Dr. Gregory was asked if this was a process he would
49 consider humane, to which he replied: "I am very concerned
50 about the use of carbon dioxide as a means of killing
51 chicks from a welfare point of view." The reference for
52 that is 19, 12, 5.
53
54 Two lines further on he went on to explain the reasons for
55 his concern, which was that there were two basic concerns;
56 one is that when carbon dioxide is inhaled at high
57 concentrations the type of concentration that would be used
58 in this situation would be at or close to one hundred
59 percent. Gas can be an irritant. This is based on
60 observations both in poultry species and also in man. That
