PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

Cassandra said:
The short answer is that this was before the Food Safety Act 1990, which introduced the ‘due diligence and all reasonable precautions’ defence. Yes, this was a formal prosecution by the local authority, though the prosecution was led by a QC rather than an environmental health officer as sometimes happened. X-ray machines were available in those days but not commonly used.
In those days public analysts’ findings were rarely challenged in magistrates’ courts and whilst this one was, in my view, a bit of a cowboy.

You mention that insects etc can be tested to see whether they have been cooked or not. Many years before this the Research Association had suggested the use of the alkaline phosphate test (normally used to check adequate milk pasteurisation) for insects. It probably wasn’t as well tailored to insects but gave a reasonable result. I encountered this same public analyst in another case where he was using the test to see whether burgers had been properly cooked. It appeared that the alkaline phosphate in muscle was slightly more heat resistant than that in milk and that an acid phosphatase test would have been more appropriate. The company involved were a bit obsessed with not over cooking their burgers. However in his evidence the public analyst suggested that 450 degrees centigrade would be an appropriate temperature to cook burgers to. He later denied saying this under cross examination, until the clerk read out what he had said. In this case the complainant, who claimed it made him sick within minutes, was a police officer who had been turned down for a franchise with the defending company. The company were still found guilty. But this was when e.coli 157 was much in the news……

To return to the relevance to this thread, I was making the case that you can have the best factual evidence in the world but sometimes there are other factors that come into play - media pressure for example.
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ok Gordon Ramsey
 
Newman Noggs said:
When I hear people commenting on the impartiality and ethics of the legal profession, I'm always reminded of Judge Caulfield in the Jeffrey Archer libel trial in 1987 who described Mary Archer, a witness for her husband, as a vision of “elegance, fragrance and radiance" whilst musing on why any man would play away.

I'm fully expecting the IC to describe Masters Gill, Parry etc in similar terms whilst wondering whether such people would really bring a frivolous case before them.
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I was in the High Court in London with an appeal case following conviction at magistrates revolving around the use of misleading terms in relation to the advertisement of "used cars".
I knew we were fucked when one of the doddering justices asked our barrister, "do people actually buy used motor vehicles?"
 
Cassandra said:
The short answer is that this was before the Food Safety Act 1990, which introduced the ‘due diligence and all reasonable precautions’ defence. Yes, this was a formal prosecution by the local authority, though the prosecution was led by a QC rather than an environmental health officer as sometimes happened. X-ray machines were available in those days but not commonly used.
In those days public analysts’ findings were rarely challenged in magistrates’ courts and whilst this one was, in my view, a bit of a cowboy.

You mention that insects etc can be tested to see whether they have been cooked or not. Many years before this the Research Association had suggested the use of the alkaline phosphate test (normally used to check adequate milk pasteurisation) for insects. It probably wasn’t as well tailored to insects but gave a reasonable result. I encountered this same public analyst in another case where he was using the test to see whether burgers had been properly cooked. It appeared that the alkaline phosphate in muscle was slightly more heat resistant than that in milk and that an acid phosphatase test would have been more appropriate. The company involved were a bit obsessed with not over cooking their burgers. However in his evidence the public analyst suggested that 450 degrees centigrade would be an appropriate temperature to cook burgers to. He later denied saying this under cross examination, until the clerk read out what he had said. In this case the complainant, who claimed it made him sick within minutes, was a police officer who had been turned down for a franchise with the defending company. The company were still found guilty. But this was when e.coli 157 was much in the news……

To return to the relevance to this thread, I was making the case that you can have the best factual evidence in the world but sometimes there are other factors that come into play - media pressure for example.
Click to expand...
You are quite right about media pressure but that is where a tribunal rather than a court may be advantageous to us. The panel are not figures well known to the general public and may be less susceptible than a local mag. I hope!
 
GortonBlue62 said:
In Greek mythology wasn't Cassandra's curse that she could accurately foretell the future but was destined to be disbelieved by everyone?

Bearing that in mind what do you think the outcome of the IC will be? (Half serious question).
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Screw that. I’m more interested to know what else goes into our sausages that’s probably worse than finding some nuts and bolts in them.
I’d say there’s a lot of dodgy stuff besides a bit of extra iron in our diet.
 
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