Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 43


     
     1        status of the operations at Sun Valley, GD Bowes, Midland
              Meat Packers and McKey Foods.
     2
              As your Lordship will know, if your Lordship has already
     3        had a chance to look at them, their reports confirm the
              high standards of hygiene are maintained at all these
     4        establishments.
 
     5        In addition, of course, there is this consideration:  In
              most countries of the world the production of food for
     6        human consumption is subject to strict government
              regulation and independent inspectors are in attendance
     7        and make regular visits to each establishment which plays
              a part in the process, that is to say, abattoir,
     8        processing plant and restaurants.
 
     9        The result of all that is this, the system at the end of
              which McDonald's sells the food to the public, though
    10        certainly not infallible, is very effective indeed.  That
              this is so I might illustrate by giving your Lordship some
    11        numbers which are, your Lordship may feel, really quite
              illuminating:
    12
              For the years 1986/87/88 and 1991 -- I know not yet what
    13        the reason for the gap is -- the average number of visits
              per year to McDonald's restaurants in the United States
    14        was an astonishing 4.7 billion.  Those figures were
              extracted from pink bundle IV/16 at page 211.  If each
    15        "visit", which is the word used in that document, and
              means customer transaction at the till, involves (as it is
    16        thought to do) the sale of an average of two meals, so it
              is two meals per visit, this means that an average of
    17        about 9.5 billion -- I am using American billion, that is
              to say, a thousand million -- 9.5 billion McDonald's meals
    18        were eaten in the USA in each of those years.
 
    19        It follows, my Lord, as night follows day, that if the
              defendants were right and that McDonald's food carried an
    20        unusual or even a significant risk of food poisoning, one
              would expect over a period of, say, 20 years that the
    21        defendants would be able to point to literally thousands
              and thousands of cases of food poisoning.  Yet, in the
    22        event, as your Lordship knows, what can they prove, they
              can show that in the US1A there was one outbreak of food
    23        poisoning attributable to McDonald's food in 1982 and one
              in 1987.  This, the last one, in fact, had nothing to do
    24        with minced beef or chicken.  It came about because a crew
              member (unknown to herself or her employers) happened to
    25        be a typhoid carrier and so contaminated some shrimps.
  
    26        In the United Kingdom, the position is similar.  As your 
              Lordship knows, McDonald's was not established here until 
    27        1974 but it has grown rapidly.  It now has 521 restaurants
              throughout the United Kingdom.  The number of meals eaten
    28        annually is obviously nothing like as great as in the USA
              where there are over 9,000 restaurants.  But it is
    29        nonetheless estimated that an average of nearly 500
              million meals are eaten at McDonald's in this country
    30        every year.
 

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