Day 206 - 22 Jan 96 - Page 15
1 either its inclusion or its exclusion as a piece of paper
2 makes no difference whatever to the Defendants' case,
3 because it has all been said already. It would be a matter
4 for your Lordship at the end of the case to assess its
5 validity or its weight.
6
7 So far as his second statement is concerned, again, one has
8 to remember to start off with, of course, that so far as I
9 am aware there is nothing either in the defence or, more
10 particularly, the leaflet about pesticide or hormone
11 residues. Hormone residues we can now discard, because
12 they have not been dealt with by Mr. North. For the
13 present, I leave aside the little bit he has tacked on at
14 the end about campylobacter, which seems to have nothing to
15 do with pesticide residues at all.
16
17 This new evidence (if I can call it that) from Mr. North
18 first arose when he was giving evidence in chief. It was
19 not even -----
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Does not the pesticides come in? "Pesticide
22 residues in their field build up in the animals' tissues
23 and can further damage the health of people on a meat-based
24 diet."
25
26 MR. RAMPTON: I was looking at the wrong bit of the leaflet.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is the "What is your poison" box. That is
29 what I thought the point of this was, really, because
30 perhaps I invited -- I do not mean to call it trouble --
31 but further evidence, because I made some comment about
32 there being nothing on pesticides in Dr. North's evidence.
33 In fact, I think there was some rather exclusory material.
34 But when he got into the witness box, he said he did have
35 something to say about pesticides. Again, I have not
36 looked back at his report or the transcript, but I thought
37 he said words to the effect: "Since I drafted the report,
38 I have changed my mind."
39
40 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, he did; that is exactly right.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Hence the opportunity to make a report such
43 as this.
44
45 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, he did. Your Lordship is quite right.
46 I looked at the wrong box. I looked at the "chemicals"
47 box, as opposed to the "poison" box. It is there, yes.
48 That is exactly what happened. He did what I described as
49 a volte face, because his earlier statement in fact went
50 the other way.
51
52 My Lord, all I would say about this is that as a report of
53 justification of a libel on McDonald's, it amounts to
54 nothing, for two reasons: first, that the only substance
55 or group of substances which is stigmatised by this latest
56 report is organophosphoruss compounds (what Dr. North calls
57 OPs), which he says are to be found in virtually all food
58 that is produced with the use of azo chemicals. That is
59 the first point to be made.
60
