Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 23
1 (Short Adjournment)
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Food poisoning is the first part of the
4 -----
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You refer to McDisease and McDeadly. Are
9 they relevant? McDisease might be thought more obviously
10 to refer to degenerative diseases. The relevant text does
11 not, in fact, refer to any deaths, where obviously the part
12 referring to animals does.
13
14 MR. RAMPTON: It would be a matter of ordinary human knowledge
15 that people do occasionally die from food poisoning. There
16 is no doubt that they do from time to time; not,
17 fortunately, very often, and usually very young people or
18 old and infirm people. But it does happen, and everybody
19 knows it happens.
20
21 I do not know what else, apart from possibly the use of
22 lethal poisons to destroy the rainforests, what other
23 activity, alleged activity, of McDonald's the ordinary
24 person might think that word "McDeadly" referred to,
25 conceivably.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, the slaughter of animals.
28
29 MR. RAMPTON: Conceivably. But is it a word which ordinary
30 people generally associate with the slaughter of farm
31 animals for food, one wonders? I do not feel terribly
32 strongly about it.
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I want to pursue it, because it might be
35 thought that the people who end up dead, or animals, are
36 the people who suffer heart attacks or cancers ---
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: It could be -----
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- and the animals who are slaughtered, more
41 readily than the people who get food poisoning.
42
43 MR. RAMPTON: I had also in mind the cartoon in the middle of
44 one of the pages, which, unfortunately, true enough, it is
45 in the section, or largely in the section, about -- I think
46 it is, I have to get it out.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is beneath the "unhealthy food" column.
49 I referred to it in my ruling on that. One actually has to
50 turn over to the page to get to the part which is most
51 obviously about food poisoning, although I realise there is
52 a reference to "at worst poisonous".
53
54 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. That is what I was thinking of. McDeadly;
55 then you get "at worst poisonous", about the children; and
56 then you come to the cartoon at the bottom of the page,
57 whose message is unequivocal: if the slaughterhouse does
58 not kill the cows, the food is certainly going to kill the
59 people.
60
