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

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