Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 08


     
     1        basically?
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I understand that in relation to the second
     6        point, but does diabetes pass your first test?  I do not
     7        want to open up a broad discussion now.
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  It may not do, and it may be that we shall in one
    10        sense pay the penalty for having litigated an irrelevant
    11        issue, but it seemed to us that since it was in the
    12        statement of Dr. Barnard, since Dr. Barnard was coming
    13        across the Atlantic to give evidence, since it could be
    14        argued that it is, if it is a risk, a well-known risk that
    15        people who eat too much of the wrong kind of food may --
    16        there is an argument, at any rate, that that is a
    17        well-known risk and has been known for a long time that
    18        people who eat a lot of the wrong kind of food may make
    19        themselves fat, obese and lead themselves down the path to
    20        diabetes.
    21
    22        The difference is in the nature of, perhaps, not only the
    23        disease, but in the length of time that there has been any
    24        suspicion cast on the substance which it is thought may
    25        cause, carry or create the disease, that is to say, the
    26        food.
    27
    28        What is noticeable about Dr. Dealer's statement -- I know
    29        I am on the second point, but this in a sense is what
    30        distinguishes it on the practical grounds from diabetes --
    31        is that he absolves McDonald's, as we see it, from any kind
    32        of culpability.  If diabetes can be slipped in under the
    33        umbrella of degenerative disease in that part of the
    34        leaflet which starts with the heading:  "What's so
    35        unhealthy about McDonald's food?" (and it maybe we are
    36        wrong about that and should not have let it come in, your
    37        Lordship will decide that at the end of the case) if it can
    38        be slipped in under that umbrella, then it would fall
    39        within the class of diseases which it could be said the
    40        leaflet implies McDonald's have knowingly or recklessly
    41        risked their customers' (inaudible) by the kind of food
    42        that they serve.
    43
    44        On the evidence, at least in this court, there does not
    45        seem to be any doubt but that the possibility of giving
    46        themselves a risk of diabetes from eating too much of the
    47        wrong kind of food has been known about for some
    48        considerable time, and there are steps that can be taken,
    49        whether by the customer or by the food company or whatever,
    50        to ensure that that does not happen; whereas what 
    51        Dr. Dealer seems to be saying is that even if McDonald's 
    52        had wanted to do it, there is not anything much they could 
    53        have done about it, if anything at all, during the history
    54        of the BSE -- I do not know what to call it -- issue,
    55        debate, controversy, question.
    56
    57        My Lord, none of that means that I resile from my first
    58        submission which would go like this:  It may be we are
    59        wrong to have let diabetes in.  So be it.  That does not
    60        mean that we are compelled to allow BSE in because BSE fits

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