Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 07


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:   The objection is the one, my Lord, that your
     3        Lordship has just identified.  It is to the deliberate
     4        deceit, the deliberate disguising of poor quality and at
     5        worst poisonous food by the use of seductive advertisement
     6        and gimmicks, et cetera.
     7
     8   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   You see, I do not think there is really any
     9        dispute about what actually goes on in the stores, and
    10        there is nothing defamatory in saying that goes on, in my
    11        mind, because people are perfectly entitled to give away
    12        stuff if they want.  It is the alleged motive which is the
    13        defamatory bit.  I have to look into whether the sting of
    14        the leaflet is basically justified in relation to that.
    15
    16        But what I suggest is, you follow your own course because
    17        when you have gone through the exercise you are going
    18        through now, as you said, you are going to come to what at
    19        the moment I see is the sting, which, in one way or
    20        another, is exploiting, using, children in an
    21        unconscionable way in order to keep their profits up in an
    22        unconscionable way so far as marketing of one kind or
    23        another is concerned.  McDonald's deny that.  You have got
    24        quite a lot of material to that end.  Whether it wins the
    25        day for you at the end of the day, you will have to wait
    26        and see.
    27
    28        If it helps you, of all the aspects in the case, I have
    29        done quite a lot of work on this.  I think I am pretty well
    30        on top of the evidence.  What I want to make sure, by you
    31        pointing at this point or that point, is that, although
    32        I think I may be on top of it, I have not missed something
    33        which is important to you.
    34
    35   MS. STEEL:   Right.  Well, just on the subject, while we are
    36        here, of the use of chemicals, and so on, to dress up the
    37        food in order to dress up low quality food in order to sell
    38        more of it, it was admitted by McDonald's on 15th December
    39        1993 that McDonald's pride themselves on the uniformity of
    40        their products throughout the world and that in order to
    41        achieve that uniformity they have set formula and
    42        specifications for menu items and use a number of additives
    43        in the preparation of their food.
    44
    45        I mean, in terms of whether or not the food is low quality
    46        there are really two aspects.  One is the nutritional
    47        aspect, which has really been covered by the nutritional
    48        side of the case, which is that the food is high in fat,
    49        sodium and sugar, and low in fibre, vitamins and minerals
    50        and therefore can be deemed to be low quality in terms of
    51        nutritional value.
    52
    53        The second aspect is more of a comment aspect, which is
    54        that it is a commonly perceived opinion, for example, that
    55        the meat that goes into hamburgers is low quality meat, and
    56        we have heard from the Plaintiffs' own witnesses that it is
    57        the cheap cuts.  Also, there is a perception amongst
    58        probably quite a sizeable part of the population that the
    59        sort of food that McDonald's sells is junk food and that
    60        junk food is what people would view as low quality food.

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