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McKenzie says in her role she answered calls from members of the public and professionals regarding ingestion of a range of poisonous substances including fungi.
She tells the court what her role involved when someone calls the help line:
We need to ascertain the circumstances, for instance it might be a toddler who has a nibble of a little brown mushroom and nothing more.
She says if someone has symptoms, it becomes more urgent to identify the fungi.
McKenzie says she was “fascinated by the world of fungi” and did extra reading on the topic.
She says in her work, it was important to be able to quickly identify the most poisonous fungi.
McKenzie is a retired pharmacist, the court hears.
For the past 17 years of her career she worked as a senior poisons information specialist at the Victorian Poisons Information Centre.
McKenzie worked at the centre from 2006, the court hears.
Prosecution calls poisons information specialist as witness
The jurors have entered the court room in Morwell.
The prosecution calls their next witness, Christine McKenzie.
While we wait for today’s proceedings to kick off, here’s a reminder of what the jury heard on Friday:
A scientific expert, Dr David Lovelock, told the trial tests detected death cap mushrooms in two out of seven test tubes containing samples from a dehydrator dumped by Patterson in the days after the mushroom lunch.
Lovelock, who worked as a virologist at Agriculture Victoria in August 2023, said the positive test tube results had a 99% similarity to the DNA of death cap mushrooms.
He said only DNA from button mushrooms were found in ziplock bags containing the beef wellington leftovers.
The court previously heard that two days after the lunch a police officer had fished leftovers of the beef wellington meal from a bin at Patterson’s property in Leongatha, with her permission.
Patterson’s trial is entering its fourth week.
We’re waiting for the jurors to enter the courtroom in Morwell.
Here’s a report from our justice and courts reporter, Nino Bucci, on what the jury heard last week.
Welcome
Welcome to day 14 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.
We’re expecting today’s evidence to begin after 10.30am once the jurors enter the courtroom.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, in regional Victoria, on 29 July 2023.
She is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and her estranged husband’s aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The attempted murder charge relates to Heather’s husband, Ian.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests with “murderous intent”, but her lawyers say the poisoning was a tragic accident.
