Day 300 - 14 Nov 96 - Page 40


     
     1        loneliness.  That advert showed a boy unhappily surveying
     2        what was to be his new home and his despair turning to joy
     3        when he saw a McDonald's store across the street.
     4        Obviously, we have not seen the advertisement for
     5        ourselves, but it is obviously not just us who holds the
     6        view that McDonald's are exploiting children's emotions in
     7        order to increase their profits.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   What are you doing, making a check as to
    10        whether you have gone through what you have prepared?
    11
    12   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Well, just take time to do that.  (Pause).
    15
    16   MR. MORRIS:   I just mention that from memory, I have not
    17        checked.  But there were two other advertisements that we
    18        have already referred to about the misdescription of
    19        packaging as ozone friendly and the use of the word
    20        'recyclable' for packaging when it clearly was not
    21        recyclable in this country.
    22
    23   MR JUSTICE BELL:  By the way, I have bothered to look at all the
    24        bits of packaging in those two bags.
    25
    26   MR. MORRIS:   Oh, right.
    27
    28   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   And the various legends about recycled
    29        paper, recyclable, and I assumed that the three arrows
    30        forming a triangle is the recyclable sign, because it
    31        actually has under it 'recyclable material' or 'recyclable
    32        paper' on one of them.  Do you know the one I mean?
    33
    34   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, I know the sign you mean, yes.
    35
    36   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There you are.  Anyway, I have checked them
    37        all through.
    38
    39   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.  Just one thing I have to say about
    40        advertising was that -- just to refer to the evidence of
    41        Peter Cox, who is a former marketing consultant.  He
    42        referred to some quotes from the book 'Behind the Arches',
    43        which is a book that is distributed by McDonald's in their
    44        official publications and encouraged by McDonald's,
    45        produced with their cooperation.  He said that McDonald's
    46        were engaged in what he called "a strategy of subversion"
    47        by trying to alter dietary preferences of the whole
    48        nation.
    49
    50        He referred to -- I will not go into the full detail, but
    51        the quote is about in Japan McDonald's faced "a fundamental
    52        challenge of establishing beef as a common food".  Then it
    53        is quoted the Japanese President, about Japanese people
    54        being short and having yellow skins.  They should eat
    55        hamburgers.  And the book says that Mr. Fujita, their
    56        President in Japan, aimed virtually all his advertising at
    57        children and young families.  He also stated, "We could
    58        teach the children that the hamburger was something good."
    59
    60        Peter Cox also referred to the sections of the book about

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