Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 50


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:  I am not sure that he did.  Mr. Atkinson's
     3        analysis really does repay careful study, I would
     4        respectfully suggest.  I have read it carefully; and
     5        provided he has not left anything out -- which I am sure he
     6        has not -- he does provide an answer, really, to every
     7        single one of the Defendants', Ms. Steel's, points in a
     8        convincing fashion; and it leads, I would submit, to the
     9        inevitable conclusion that there is nothing in the way in
    10        which the animals used for McDonald's are treated which
    11        goes beyond that ordinary degree of suffering which the
    12        ordinary person would regard as a necessary and acceptable
    13        adjunct of eating animals.
    14
    15   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The next matter I wanted to ask about is on
    16        page 6, and it is paragraph (6).
    17
    18   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
    19
    20   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can you explain that to me?
    21
    22   MR. RAMPTON:  I am in the wrong section, I am sorry.
    23
    24   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is about two pages before the A divider;
    25        it has "6" at the top.  It is the paragraph above 43 --
    26        (6).
    27
    28   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  If -- and I may be wrong about this on
    29        reflection; I have worried about this paragraph since
    30        I wrote it -- if the allegation of murder incorporates
    31        anything more of the leaflet -- obviously it does not
    32        include the keeping of the animals in houses; perhaps I can
    33        deal with that -- but if it incorporates the methods and
    34        practices alleged at and just before the moment of
    35        slaughter -- which also of course reflects upon the word
    36        "torture", but there is no necessary distinction there,
    37        because people under torture often die, and people would
    38        say that that was murder -- if the allegation of murder
    39        extends in context to the various allegations made below
    40        the heading "Murdering a Big Mac", then the defence of fair
    41        comment must fail, because the facts stated in the leaflet
    42        in support of the allegation of murder (if, indeed, that is
    43        what they are) must fail because they are, in large part,
    44        false.  On our view of the case, the only one which is
    45        partly true is the allegation about chickens and pigs
    46        living inside.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  You see, I thought I could discard
    49        murder altogether from this case, in the light of what you
    50        said early on.  I will think again, but it might be said 
    51        that torture most obviously relates to practices in the 
    52        rearing and during the actual slaughter of the animals --- 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
    55
    56   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- and that murder most obviously relates to
    57        the mere fact of killing them.
    58
    59   MR. RAMPTON:  I have always accepted that that is all it relates
    60        to, in the context here; and then it is incapable of being

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