Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 15
1 any longer, and it all gets turned into beef as well. Just
2 pause a moment. What I want to know is what else you say
3 it means, which might justify responsibility for starvation
4 in the third world? That is what you are about to tell me
5 but I keep stopping you. I want to spell it out first.
6
7 When we come to rainforest, it seems to me that you agree
8 that the general sting is, guilty of destruction of the
9 rainforest and you probably agree there by causing wanton
10 damage to the environment as well. Indeed, that section
11 ends by a charge that if you bite into a Big Mac you are
12 helping McDonald's empire to wreck the planet. What
13 McDonald's say, the specific charge in support of that
14 general charge is that they are alleged to have used legal
15 poisons to destroy vast areas of central American
16 rainforest, grazing pastures, for cattle to be sent to the
17 United States as burgers and pet foods and to provide fast
18 food packaging. So general charge, guilty of destruction
19 of the rainforest; specific charges, using lethal poisons
20 to destroy rainforest and do so to create pastures for the
21 cattle and doing so in order to provide fast food
22 packaging.
23
24 Again, what I want to know is, do you accept that that is
25 the meaning? If you do, what other, what extra defamatory
26 meanings, are there? You might say, 'Yes, we agree with
27 the McDonald's meaning but it also makes this defamatory
28 statement and that defamatory statement, and whether we can
29 justify a defamatory statement about lethal poisons does
30 not matter because we can justify these other defamatory
31 statements -----'
32
33 MR MORRIS: As well-----
34
35 MR JUSTICE BELL: "And per section 5, having justified those, it
36 does not matter that we have alleged lethal poisons, we
37 can't prove that, because that would not lower McDonald's
38 reputation below the level it has got to once we have
39 proved the facts which we have proved".
40
41 So what I want to have clear in my mind at some stage is,
42 looking at the meaning of McDonald's pleaded, to what
43 extent do you agree with that? And having established
44 that, to what extent you say, 'Whether or not we can
45 justify the specific statements McDonald's have referred
46 to, to what extent are there other specific defamatory
47 statements which McDonald's have not bothered to put in, or
48 have not chosen to put in, but which we can justify? And
49 either generally or by the route of section 5 of the
50 Defamation Act, give us a good defence.'
51
52 MR. MORRIS: Right. Regarding the first point, the economics
53 point, even McDonald's in their own, what we would say
54 greatly inaccurate set of meanings -- well, in some
55 respects greatly inaccurate, for example, in meaning A
56 -- recognise that, for example, the eviction of farmers
57 has a causal relation to the investments which they say,
58 whether McDonald's own investments or not is irrelevant,
59 but the point being that they say that by purchasing large
60 tracts of land, we would say cattle, in poor countries
