Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 08
1 basically?
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: Yes.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand that in relation to the second
6 point, but does diabetes pass your first test? I do not
7 want to open up a broad discussion now.
8
9 MR. RAMPTON: It may not do, and it may be that we shall in one
10 sense pay the penalty for having litigated an irrelevant
11 issue, but it seemed to us that since it was in the
12 statement of Dr. Barnard, since Dr. Barnard was coming
13 across the Atlantic to give evidence, since it could be
14 argued that it is, if it is a risk, a well-known risk that
15 people who eat too much of the wrong kind of food may --
16 there is an argument, at any rate, that that is a
17 well-known risk and has been known for a long time that
18 people who eat a lot of the wrong kind of food may make
19 themselves fat, obese and lead themselves down the path to
20 diabetes.
21
22 The difference is in the nature of, perhaps, not only the
23 disease, but in the length of time that there has been any
24 suspicion cast on the substance which it is thought may
25 cause, carry or create the disease, that is to say, the
26 food.
27
28 What is noticeable about Dr. Dealer's statement -- I know
29 I am on the second point, but this in a sense is what
30 distinguishes it on the practical grounds from diabetes --
31 is that he absolves McDonald's, as we see it, from any kind
32 of culpability. If diabetes can be slipped in under the
33 umbrella of degenerative disease in that part of the
34 leaflet which starts with the heading: "What's so
35 unhealthy about McDonald's food?" (and it maybe we are
36 wrong about that and should not have let it come in, your
37 Lordship will decide that at the end of the case) if it can
38 be slipped in under that umbrella, then it would fall
39 within the class of diseases which it could be said the
40 leaflet implies McDonald's have knowingly or recklessly
41 risked their customers' (inaudible) by the kind of food
42 that they serve.
43
44 On the evidence, at least in this court, there does not
45 seem to be any doubt but that the possibility of giving
46 themselves a risk of diabetes from eating too much of the
47 wrong kind of food has been known about for some
48 considerable time, and there are steps that can be taken,
49 whether by the customer or by the food company or whatever,
50 to ensure that that does not happen; whereas what
51 Dr. Dealer seems to be saying is that even if McDonald's
52 had wanted to do it, there is not anything much they could
53 have done about it, if anything at all, during the history
54 of the BSE -- I do not know what to call it -- issue,
55 debate, controversy, question.
56
57 My Lord, none of that means that I resile from my first
58 submission which would go like this: It may be we are
59 wrong to have let diabetes in. So be it. That does not
60 mean that we are compelled to allow BSE in because BSE fits
