Day 300 - 14 Nov 96 - Page 40
1 loneliness. That advert showed a boy unhappily surveying
2 what was to be his new home and his despair turning to joy
3 when he saw a McDonald's store across the street.
4 Obviously, we have not seen the advertisement for
5 ourselves, but it is obviously not just us who holds the
6 view that McDonald's are exploiting children's emotions in
7 order to increase their profits.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What are you doing, making a check as to
10 whether you have gone through what you have prepared?
11
12 MS. STEEL: Yes.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, just take time to do that. (Pause).
15
16 MR. MORRIS: I just mention that from memory, I have not
17 checked. But there were two other advertisements that we
18 have already referred to about the misdescription of
19 packaging as ozone friendly and the use of the word
20 'recyclable' for packaging when it clearly was not
21 recyclable in this country.
22
23 MR JUSTICE BELL: By the way, I have bothered to look at all the
24 bits of packaging in those two bags.
25
26 MR. MORRIS: Oh, right.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: And the various legends about recycled
29 paper, recyclable, and I assumed that the three arrows
30 forming a triangle is the recyclable sign, because it
31 actually has under it 'recyclable material' or 'recyclable
32 paper' on one of them. Do you know the one I mean?
33
34 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I know the sign you mean, yes.
35
36 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There you are. Anyway, I have checked them
37 all through.
38
39 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Just one thing I have to say about
40 advertising was that -- just to refer to the evidence of
41 Peter Cox, who is a former marketing consultant. He
42 referred to some quotes from the book 'Behind the Arches',
43 which is a book that is distributed by McDonald's in their
44 official publications and encouraged by McDonald's,
45 produced with their cooperation. He said that McDonald's
46 were engaged in what he called "a strategy of subversion"
47 by trying to alter dietary preferences of the whole
48 nation.
49
50 He referred to -- I will not go into the full detail, but
51 the quote is about in Japan McDonald's faced "a fundamental
52 challenge of establishing beef as a common food". Then it
53 is quoted the Japanese President, about Japanese people
54 being short and having yellow skins. They should eat
55 hamburgers. And the book says that Mr. Fujita, their
56 President in Japan, aimed virtually all his advertising at
57 children and young families. He also stated, "We could
58 teach the children that the hamburger was something good."
59
60 Peter Cox also referred to the sections of the book about
