Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 25


     
     1
     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.
    19
    20   MR. RAMPTON:  Quite.
    21
    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

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