Day 008 - 07 Jul 94 - Page 22
1 in food protection and contrary to the interests of public
health.'
2
Conclusion. These public health considerations need to be
3 given full weight in any decision affecting the
availability and use of disposables for food service and
4 packaging".
5 Mr. Langert, my question is this: Does McDonald's give
these public health considerations their full weight in
6 the decision what kind of materials to use in a store?
A. Yes, we do. We place the sanitation issue as one of
7 the very basic philosophies of our company. We will not
sacrifice any standards related to quality and public
8 health and sanitation. If I can illustrate two examples
of my own personal experience with public health
9 officials. One is, in the United States at least, we are
under extreme scrutiny of public health officials in our
10 operations to a point where one of the reasons we use more
packaging sometimes is because of public health officials,
11 i.e. we wrap straws in the United States; we wrap cutlery
with plastic sleeves; there are other items which we
12 wrap.
13 We would, from a pure economical viewpoint, love to not do
that. We would probably save half the cost of packaging.
14 The reason we do that is because public health officials
expect that and we agree with that.
15
Also, in our work with the Environmental Defense Fund when
16 we studied the reusable issue, our personal experience
confirmed this, especially in terms of the way dishwashers
17 work. Again this is not a dishwasher at home. This is a
dishwasher that is washing many times, many cycles per
18 day. We happened to visit a sit-down restaurant which the
Environmental Defense Fund wanted to show, they wanted to
19 show an operation that used reusables and dishwashers. We
went behind the counter and the dishwasher was not
20 working. It did not have the proper amount of chemicals
in it either.
21
Q. Mr. Langert, only one more page in this document at the
22 moment. If you turn on to page 66, it is a sideways
document of a chart?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Is this part of the Fairfax County Study?
A. Yes.
25
Q. It is headed, "Comparison of Mean Bacteria Counts for
26 Disposables and Reusable Foodservice Items from Three
Studies (Colonies per Utensil)". Then we see "Organisms"
27 1976 study under "Disposables" and the same date under
"Reusables"?
28 A. Yes.
29 Q. In the 1976 study the total bacteria count of colonies was
17.6, yes?
30 A. Correct.
