Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

It is just completely untrue. The committee was again told an absolute untruth and lots of them. I will speak about the case, which is particularly disturbing, and I can understand that anybody looking at the video would be disturbed. Most lay people would never have seen animals slaughtered. I have in my career from time to time. It is never a pleasant experience, to be frank. It is certainly particularly difficult for somebody who is not used to it.

We had found that the farmer had used a carcinogenic and genotoxic product on the pigs. He agreed, in a statement made under caution, that he had done so. This was not contested. The animals had to be taken out of the food chain. They could not possibly be put into the food chain so they had to be taken out of it.

I was out of the chain on all of these issues. However, I have gone back over the papers on this as best I can. The Department wrote to the individual concerned and told him that the animals had to be taken out of the food chain and should be slaughtered in an approved slaughter plant. The farmer concerned then took actions in the High Court and the Supreme Court to try to overturn our decisions. He lost and then approached us - I have the letter, which I have read - saying that he wished to carry out the slaughter on the farm using a humane killer, a captive bolt gun, and that he had the skills to do this. We then assessed him as best we could, that is to say, some of our vets visited the farm and observed him killing pigs. There were, I believe, about 4,000 pigs on the farm. I should say that on a farm of that size the farmer would be well used to killing pigs. It is normal practice if there is a sick pig or whatever that a farmer will kill it. Therefore, one would expect him to be reasonably expert in using a bolt gun of this sort. The farmer was assessed by our staff and found to be very capable of doing the job, both physically and mentally, as much as our staff could observe the mental issue. He certainly had the expertise and certainly carried out the task correctly when observed.

We then moved to agree to the farmer doing it and we supervised as much of the slaughter as it was possible for us to do at the time. My understanding is that we directly supervised about 25% of the slaughter. During that time, he carried out the work meticulously. In fact, our assessment from staff was that he achieved, if one likes, a hit rate on the animals, that is to say, immediate slaughter with the first shot, of between 98% and 99%, which is extremely high. This is similar, as I understand it, to what would have been achieved in approved slaughter plants at the time. He was also observed to carry out the slaughter very correctly. There is material on file at the time of him approaching the pig from behind, stabilising the pig, applying the humane killer and firing.

The humane killer he was using was a particularly powerful one. It was sufficient to kill a 600 kg bovine and the maximum charge was being used. The maximum chance of an immediate kill was achieved with what was being done and he was doing it properly. Of course, this does not accord with what is depicted on the video. The video is approximately six and a half minutes long and from my observation yesterday, the clip in which the farmer is shown killing a group of pigs is one minute long. It shows six pigs in the killing pen. Our staff observed the farmer normally having about ten or even 12 pigs in that pen. Obviously, if one has more pigs in the pen, they are more stable because they are up against one another and it, therefore, makes it easier to apply the humane killer and kill. In that video, he got one of the shots obviously badly wrong. This could have been one of the 1% that we had observed him getting wrong, which happens, I am afraid. He shot another pig once and then very quickly shot it a second time. He obviously made a decision that he may have not completed the task but there is no evidence that the pig was in any particular distress or whatever, at least I could not see any such evidence. I am not a professional but our professional staff have looked at this.

Can I say something else? This is an important point for anybody who may, unfortunately, have to watch that video. I am informed by our expert staff that when one kills a pig, it is completely normal for it to make a paddling motion with its four legs. This is known as a clonic movement. It is normal and does not mean the pig is alive. It is a particular feature of pigs that immediately after death, they make this paddling motion with their legs. That, in itself, is not a concern. In so far as we can see what he was doing, the farmer was doing the job well and correctly and showed no personal signs of distress. He also did not complain to our staff at the time. He had requested to do this in the first place and displayed a capacity to do it. As far as we could see, therefore, the thing was being done right. The video shows at least one pig being slaughtered improperly but more than 4,000 pigs were slaughtered.