Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 25


     
     1        The issue, as I pose it is this:  Does the Plaintiffs' food
     2        constitute a significant hazard to human health?  I break
     3        the issue down as follows:  First, if -- and it is a big
     4        "if" -- there is an association between a diet high in fat
     5        and sodium and various degenerative diseases, such as heart
     6        disease, certain forms of cancer and diabetes, does it
     7        follow that McDonald's can be held responsible for this?
     8
     9        I put the question another way:  Are the crude epithets
    10        used in the leaflet to describe McDonald's food or, rather,
    11        the effect of it, that is to say, "McCancer", "McDeadly",
    12        "McDisease", and the message conveyed by the course
    13        cartoon in the middle of the leaflet warranted?  The answer
    14        on the Plaintiffs' case is plainly that they are not".
    15
    16        My Lord, a bit further down that page at line 27, I am
    17        recorded as having said this:  "My Lord, this is the
    18        important proposition in the case:  These distinguished
    19        experts are all of the same view; it is this, that the
    20        Defendants and their experts -- their witnesses, I prefer
    21        to call them -- have committed an absolutely fundamental
    22        error -- what one used to call "a school boy howler" -- in
    23        asserting a relationship between McDonald's food and the
    24        degenerative conditions that I have mentioned.  It is that
    25        the Defendants have confused food with diet".
    26
    27        As I said earlier, a general assertion of an association
    28        between diet and the various kinds of degenerative disease,
    29        absent an allegation that McDonald's food was responsible
    30        for the causation of those degenerative diseases, would not
    31        have been a libel on McDonald's.  My Lord, I repeated in
    32        different words more or less that submission at the bottom
    33        of page 37 at line 26 to 28 -- I will not read that out.
    34
    35        My Lord, I came back to it again on page 38.  This is what
    36        I call the subsidiary question at line 17:  "Ignoring the
    37        confusion which the Defendants have made between diet and
    38        food, is there, in fact, any credible or reliable
    39        scientific evidence of a causal relationship between, on
    40        the one hand, a diet high in animal fat, sugar and sodium,
    41        and low in fibre, and, on the other hand, first, heart
    42        disease, second, as the Defendants now allege, cancer of
    43        the bowel, breast, ovary, uterus, prostrate and pancreas
    44        and, finally, diabetes?
    45
    46        The Plaintiffs accept (and have always accepted) that there
    47        is a recognised association between a diet which is high in
    48        fat and salt and salt heart disease".  I pause there to say
    49        two things:  In the context of these remarks of mine and,
    50        indeed, of the whole of the earlier background which I have 
    51        read to your Lordship, the concession that there is an 
    52        association between diet and heart disease can only mean 
    53        that it is a concession that the association is a causal
    54        one.  That is the first thing as a matter of ordinary
    55        construction it can only mean that; otherwise it would be
    56        meaningless to make the concession.
    57
    58        The second thing is this:  Your Lordship will have noticed
    59        (never mind what the Defendants have done) that the
    60        Plaintiffs have not called any evidence on the question of

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