Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 19


     
     1        complained of in the Statement of Claim for reasons better
     2        known to McDonald's -- the allegation that cattle consumed
     3        ten times the amount of grain and soya that humans do
     4        resulting in waste in terms of protein, it says here, 'The
     5        waste is 124 million tons per year at a value of 20 billion
     6        US dollars.  It is been calculated that this sum would
     7        feed, clothe and house the world's entire population for
     8        one year.'
     9
    10        So it is an allegation there, the drift of which is that
    11        food is fed to animals resulting in only a tenth of the
    12        protein where meat is consumed rather than eating the
    13        original grains, and that is an important result of the
    14        cash crop economy.  Whether grain is fed to south American
    15        cattle or cattle anywhere in the world, the important thing
    16        is that cattle, the promotion of beef and meat consumption
    17        wherever it takes place, is part of the cause of hunger,
    18        and whether or not the grain is soya or not - it says
    19        'grain and soya-----'
    20
    21   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes, I do not think you need descend to...
    22        The note I have made for your benefit, what it seems to me
    23        you are saying, is that apart from what McDonald's have
    24        pleaded as a defamatory meaning, you say that there is a
    25        defamatory meaning in the term, and I am sticking to
    26        economic imperialism now, not rainforest.  That McDonald's
    27        have used their power as a multi-national to cause the
    28        eviction of small farmers, to trap poor countries into
    29        producing more and more food for export, to cause the
    30        exportation of staple crops and to turn the use of the best
    31        farmland to meat production.  Does that summarise it?
    32
    33   MR. MORRIS:   The last one, it is not necessarily meat.
    34
    35   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   It is in McDonald's.  I am only concerned
    36        with McDonald's, I am not concerned with a large tea
    37        importing country or coffee beans so far as McDonald's are
    38        concerned.
    39
    40   MR. MORRIS:   No, no, but the soya production relates to that as
    41        well.
    42
    43   MR JUSTICE BELL:  I would include it in whether ranching or feed
    44        -----
    45
    46   MR. MORRIS:   Grain, yes.  Grain.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I will just say feed.
    49
    50   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.  But I would not accept that, because what 
    51        McDonald's have done is taken these general allegations 
    52        about the way a system works of which McDonald's is one. 
    53        Clearly, all the way through it is one of several giant
    54        corporations -- it's whatever -- and so for McDonald's to
    55        start saying, "Some are doing 'this', and 'that' results in
    56        'this'", we do not accept that.  We accept that McDonald's
    57        is part of that system, and a prominent part of that
    58        system.  We do not accept the meaning that -- I mean,
    59        McDonald's directly or indirectly, we do accept that
    60        McDonald's directly or indirectly are responsible for those

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