Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 37
1 it is just their same attitude that pervades every issue in
2 this case.
3
4 It was pointed out on page 61 that the sheet of paper which
5 they had produced, which I believe was undated, about
6 so-called animal welfare policy was in fact just a general
7 list of things that suppliers should be concerned about,
8 this was not only covering certain animal conditions. At
9 the bottom of 61, he was asked, "So prior to 1993 when your
10 fact book was brought out, nowhere was it in writing, there
11 was no written policy about McDonald's policy on animal
12 welfare?" Answer, "Not as far as I am aware."
13
14 Then at the bottom of page 63 there is an exchange about
15 the fact that the subjects became topical, miraculously
16 they became topical, just before McDonald's produced some
17 kind of written statement on the subject, and we would say,
18 and I put to him, "Right, it was in fact to deal with
19 public...", and I was going to say 'criticism', it was 'dot
20 dot dot' and he jumped in to say, answer, "Of course."
21
22 Finally, on page 65, just a further thing about, "How many
23 people from McDonald's visit, say, abattoirs?" He said,
24 "Two people, that is Keith Kenny and Barbara Crawford,
25 they go, I would say, three to four in total for the two
26 people, per year." So they have two people to visit, not
27 counting Sun Valley, and make a total of about three or
28 four visits in a whole year. That is on average, less than
29 two visits per year each to abattoirs. There was
30 discussion about Sainsbury's having people currently
31 employed in abattoirs following that.
32
33 Can I just make some further points? (Pause) Just to
34 finish off what I have had to say, that on chickens I did
35 go through the cruelty, the various parts of the process
36 that were cruel. I will not do the same for cattle and
37 pigs, because it is exactly the same. Basically, as far as
38 denial of siblings, confinement, age of death, boredom,
39 lack of natural behaviour, disease, lack of individual
40 treatment, leg weaknesses, obviously those, or very, very
41 similar things, apply equally well to cattle and pigs.
42 Including transport and slaughter pre-killing line and
43 during the actual killing itself.
44
45 It is cruel, all those stages, not only is it cruel but all
46 those stages, it does not come within the minimum
47 conditions outlined by the five freedoms which McDonald's
48 accept as a basis for gauging animal cruelty and accepted
49 by Mr. Gregory, who accepted those, as I said yesterday, as
50 capable of being available in industry, bearing in mind
51 commercial considerations. He said they were not an
52 extremist view, i.e., they were not a view which is
53 primarily concerned with animal welfare, which this part of
54 the case should be concerned with. We are primarily
55 concerned with animal welfare, the fact that it may or may
56 not be commercially possible is only a secondly
57 consideration because as far as we are concerned the
58 question is, do animals suffer, yes or no? Whether it is
59 realistic or unrealistic within McDonald's attempts to make
60 profits out of the meat industry is a secondary question.
