Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 25
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is put against you there is that, so be
3 it, but why you should stay away is that there is a
4 significantly greater risk of food poisoning from a
5 meat-based diet than from a non-meat-based diet.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: That is what the defence of justification is.
8 I am at the moment on meaning -- and I will of course come
9 to that, as your Lordship wishes me to. So far as meaning
10 is concerned, it could not be in this leaflet at all if it
11 were expressed in the way in which I have rewritten it in
12 paragraph 2(2).
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, what I was trying to put, I suggest, is
15 it might be relevant to meaning. You say -- and it may be
16 with considerable justification -- that there is no point
17 in anything being in this leaflet unless it is critical of
18 McDonald's.
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20 MR. RAMPTON: Quite.
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22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Whether of McDonald's expressly or of an
23 industry of which McDonald's is a significant part. But,
24 in answer to your rhetorical question "what is the point of
25 mentioning it all", the answer is posed: to deter people
26 from eating meat, because there is a greater risk of food
27 poisoning if you eat meat than if you do not; and,
28 particularly, there is a greater risk if you eat chicken or
29 minced meat in burgers.
30
31 MR. RAMPTON: I agree with that. Obviously, I agree with that
32 as a matter of meaning. All I am saying is that if it were
33 not saying that the risk was a serious one, if all it was
34 saying was there is a slight risk of food poisoning,
35 generally speaking, and the most common source is chicken
36 or beefburgers, or whatever it may be, it would not have a
37 place in this leaflet at all. It can only be there because
38 it is supposed to be one of the things that McDonald's do
39 not want you to know, that there is a serious risk, a real
40 and, indeed, a very real risk that if you eat this food
41 with any sort of frequency you will or may get food
42 poisoning.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. If you were to win that argument, as it
45 were, on what the real thrust of it is, then it might be
46 expressed in this way, that the First and Second Plaintiffs
47 sell meat products which, as they must know, expose their
48 customers, including children to whom they promote their
49 meals, to a serious or very real risk of food poisoning.
50
51 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. That, it could be said on the evidence, is
52 false. That is more or less what the meaning does say.
53 You are selling food -----
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is effectively the same as your meaning,
56 is it, except, for some reason, you have just -- I say you,
57 the pleader -- referred in (M) to hamburgers.
58
59 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. I do not know why that was.
60
