Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 25
1 The issue, as I pose it is this: Does the Plaintiffs' food
2 constitute a significant hazard to human health? I break
3 the issue down as follows: First, if -- and it is a big
4 "if" -- there is an association between a diet high in fat
5 and sodium and various degenerative diseases, such as heart
6 disease, certain forms of cancer and diabetes, does it
7 follow that McDonald's can be held responsible for this?
8
9 I put the question another way: Are the crude epithets
10 used in the leaflet to describe McDonald's food or, rather,
11 the effect of it, that is to say, "McCancer", "McDeadly",
12 "McDisease", and the message conveyed by the course
13 cartoon in the middle of the leaflet warranted? The answer
14 on the Plaintiffs' case is plainly that they are not".
15
16 My Lord, a bit further down that page at line 27, I am
17 recorded as having said this: "My Lord, this is the
18 important proposition in the case: These distinguished
19 experts are all of the same view; it is this, that the
20 Defendants and their experts -- their witnesses, I prefer
21 to call them -- have committed an absolutely fundamental
22 error -- what one used to call "a school boy howler" -- in
23 asserting a relationship between McDonald's food and the
24 degenerative conditions that I have mentioned. It is that
25 the Defendants have confused food with diet".
26
27 As I said earlier, a general assertion of an association
28 between diet and the various kinds of degenerative disease,
29 absent an allegation that McDonald's food was responsible
30 for the causation of those degenerative diseases, would not
31 have been a libel on McDonald's. My Lord, I repeated in
32 different words more or less that submission at the bottom
33 of page 37 at line 26 to 28 -- I will not read that out.
34
35 My Lord, I came back to it again on page 38. This is what
36 I call the subsidiary question at line 17: "Ignoring the
37 confusion which the Defendants have made between diet and
38 food, is there, in fact, any credible or reliable
39 scientific evidence of a causal relationship between, on
40 the one hand, a diet high in animal fat, sugar and sodium,
41 and low in fibre, and, on the other hand, first, heart
42 disease, second, as the Defendants now allege, cancer of
43 the bowel, breast, ovary, uterus, prostrate and pancreas
44 and, finally, diabetes?
45
46 The Plaintiffs accept (and have always accepted) that there
47 is a recognised association between a diet which is high in
48 fat and salt and salt heart disease". I pause there to say
49 two things: In the context of these remarks of mine and,
50 indeed, of the whole of the earlier background which I have
51 read to your Lordship, the concession that there is an
52 association between diet and heart disease can only mean
53 that it is a concession that the association is a causal
54 one. That is the first thing as a matter of ordinary
55 construction it can only mean that; otherwise it would be
56 meaningless to make the concession.
57
58 The second thing is this: Your Lordship will have noticed
59 (never mind what the Defendants have done) that the
60 Plaintiffs have not called any evidence on the question of
