Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 19
1 complained of in the Statement of Claim for reasons better
2 known to McDonald's -- the allegation that cattle consumed
3 ten times the amount of grain and soya that humans do
4 resulting in waste in terms of protein, it says here, 'The
5 waste is 124 million tons per year at a value of 20 billion
6 US dollars. It is been calculated that this sum would
7 feed, clothe and house the world's entire population for
8 one year.'
9
10 So it is an allegation there, the drift of which is that
11 food is fed to animals resulting in only a tenth of the
12 protein where meat is consumed rather than eating the
13 original grains, and that is an important result of the
14 cash crop economy. Whether grain is fed to south American
15 cattle or cattle anywhere in the world, the important thing
16 is that cattle, the promotion of beef and meat consumption
17 wherever it takes place, is part of the cause of hunger,
18 and whether or not the grain is soya or not - it says
19 'grain and soya-----'
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, I do not think you need descend to...
22 The note I have made for your benefit, what it seems to me
23 you are saying, is that apart from what McDonald's have
24 pleaded as a defamatory meaning, you say that there is a
25 defamatory meaning in the term, and I am sticking to
26 economic imperialism now, not rainforest. That McDonald's
27 have used their power as a multi-national to cause the
28 eviction of small farmers, to trap poor countries into
29 producing more and more food for export, to cause the
30 exportation of staple crops and to turn the use of the best
31 farmland to meat production. Does that summarise it?
32
33 MR. MORRIS: The last one, it is not necessarily meat.
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is in McDonald's. I am only concerned
36 with McDonald's, I am not concerned with a large tea
37 importing country or coffee beans so far as McDonald's are
38 concerned.
39
40 MR. MORRIS: No, no, but the soya production relates to that as
41 well.
42
43 MR JUSTICE BELL: I would include it in whether ranching or feed
44 -----
45
46 MR. MORRIS: Grain, yes. Grain.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will just say feed.
49
50 MR. MORRIS: Yes. But I would not accept that, because what
51 McDonald's have done is taken these general allegations
52 about the way a system works of which McDonald's is one.
53 Clearly, all the way through it is one of several giant
54 corporations -- it's whatever -- and so for McDonald's to
55 start saying, "Some are doing 'this', and 'that' results in
56 'this'", we do not accept that. We accept that McDonald's
57 is part of that system, and a prominent part of that
58 system. We do not accept the meaning that -- I mean,
59 McDonald's directly or indirectly, we do accept that
60 McDonald's directly or indirectly are responsible for those
