Day 013 - 19 Jul 94 - Page 21
1
Q. I accept you were not at this meeting but, surely, you
2 would have been aware of criticisms, would you not?
A. I am aware of criticisms both in my official capacity
3 and I read the newspaper, yes.
4 Q. And criticisms relating to health and/or the nutritional
value of McDonald's products?
5 A. Yes, in general terms, yes.
6 Q. I think we did refer to the letter earlier from the New
York Attorney General about the Chicken McNuggetts
7 advertisement where he was talking about consumers being
concerned about the links between cancer and heart disease
8 and diet?
A. Yes.
9
Q. "We cannot at this stage of the situation really address
10 or defend nutrition. We do not sell nutrition and people
do not come to McDonald's for nutrition." Why cannot
11 McDonald's address nutrition?
A. Well, these sentences you are taking are out of the
12 context of the entire document, in my opinion, as I have
read it. This is at the very beginning stages. This is
13 before we formulated a plan. This is before we started
doing our advertising and discussing things such as
14 balance and other things that we stressed in our
advertising; and I think that is the point of this, that
15 it is an early stage. There are suggestions here about
what we should be doing.
16
Q. Why can you not address nutrition?
17 A. I thought my last response was the answer to that.
That is, that we had not developed a plan yet and
18 established a basis by which we could address this
particular topic.
19
Q. So you are saying you could not address nutrition because
20 you had not worked out your line on it?
A. That is correct.
21
Q. What about the next part: "We do not sell nutrition and
22 people do not come to McDonald's for nutrition"?
A. We are not a health store. We do not say: "Come eat
23 our healthy product, all the, you know, vitamin A you need
for the day" by eating this particular product. That is
24 not what we do. I mean, if you read the following
sections, A, B, C and D, they go on to indicate that we do
25 not want people, we do not stress that people eat here
every one of their meals. There is a time and place for
26 everything and balance makes sense.
27 MR. MORRIS: Just on the memo, it is true, is it not, that
people do not go to McDonald's for nutrition, as it says
28 in this memo?
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you answer that question?
30 MR. MORRIS: He may be able to.
