Another case which like the bolt in sausage illustrates some vagaries of judicial processes. It started with a trading standards officer on holiday buying a can of ham and being “disgusted” by its contents. On his return to work he purchased three cans as a formal sample; one for the Public Analyst, one for the company concerned and a reference sample for the Laboratory of the Government Chemist.
Now if the trading standards officer had wanted to charge the company under the food labelling regulations he would have had a clear cut case. The letters of the wording “sectioned and formed” were too small. However, he chose to use a different part of food legislation claiming that the product was “not of the nature, substance or quality demanded”. Whilst the penalties for both offences were similar using “not of the nature…..” had implications of deceit - trying to sell mutton as lamb so to speak. Or perhaps in modern parlance “acting in bad faith”? Any perceived connection between some of the actions in this case and any current quasi legal proceedings involving footballing authorities and clubs is purely coincidental.
So the public analyst was asked to examine the sample and he used some form of microscopy alongside basic compositional analysis. The main criticism from in the public analyst's report related to the structure / texture of the product. In particular he described the structure as resembling chipboard.
The Research Association where I worked was asked to examine the second sample and since my PhD was looking at the ultrastructural changes occurring during the processing of pig muscle through to a ham type product, I was allocated the task. This was the first time I had been involved in a court case.
Using large frozen sections I concluded that the product was made up of meat pieces about 1.5 to 2 inches long by about 1 to 1.5 inches wide at the widest point and about 0.3 inches thick. My meat technology colleagues advised that this was consistent with the fairly regular process for this type of product of passing the meat through a 1/4 inch kidney plate before tumbling in brine to produce a sticky exudate that would bind the meat pieces together when cooked in the can and distributing the curing salts through the meat to produce a sliceable product and avoid too much water separation in the can as the product was cooked. So not really like chipboard which would be a more applicable description for a chopped ham and pork product. Other manufacturer's products were similar but didn't have the additional descriptor "sectioned and formed".
As I recall the trial started on a Monday and the Sunday Times on the Sunday before the trial had on its front page (either of the main paper or one of its supplements) a large picture of a ham with a tap attached to it with water flowing out of it. The accompanying article was all about how much water was incorporated into ham products. Purely coincidental of course.
The defence counsel did not have any pretrial discussion with me which I presumed was normal practice - though in later cases I felt these discussions were helpful, particularly in helping them to understand technical weakness in the prosecution evidence.
The trial began and the Public Analyst gave his evidence without any reference to his original report and avoided using the reference to the chipboard analogy, indeed his description became fairly similar to my report. Defence counsel failed to cross examine him on this change in his evidence - probably because he hadn’t appreciated the change. The Public Analyst was followed by someone from the Laboratory of the Government Chemistry and it came as a surprise to me that they had analysed the third sample. It was a total red herring intended to blind the court with “science”. They described a technique known as C13 Fourier Transform NMR - basically as an over elaborate method to measure hydroxyproline and hence connective tissue content. It had no relevance to the whole point of the prosecution which was how the meat had been processed not about the composition of the original meat. It begged a “What does this have to do with the price of fish?” type question - which didn’t come from defence counsel.
My turn came to give evidence and I struggled to discriminate my evidence from that given orally by the Public Analyst. I hoped that counsel would ask about the written report of the Public Analyst and tried to guide him in that direction when he asked whether the description “sectioned and formed” was misleading and I suggested that the description given in the Public Analyst’s written report was much more misleading - he didn’t ask me to elaborate, though I don’t think the magistrate liked my response and prosecuting counsel, not surprisingly, didn’t ask me to elaborate either.
The case ran to a second day; I was released so didn’t attend the second day. I was disappointed as I left the court but I was approached by someone I hadn’t met before although I knew of him as having a long association with the meat industry. He was there from the Meat Research Institute as an observer. He said quite simply that he thought I had done well in giving my evidence.
The company lost the case and shortly afterwards the Director of the Research Association where I worked received a letter of complaint from the Technical Director of the company and blaming me for losing the case for them. Fortunately for me our director had previously worked with the observer who had approached me after I had given evidence, so I suggested that he ‘phone him and get an independent view of my evidence.
I didn’t hear any more of the complaint, but I did bump into the observer a few months later at a meat industry event. He told me that in his view the main reason that the company lost was because their Technical Director was a complete shambles when cross examined on the second day of the trial. Any similarities to any executive of the Premier League are purely coincidental.
I learned an awful lot from that experience.
