Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 09

     
     1        argument, that the leaflet goes just beyond saying 'are
     2        responsible for some suffering or an awful lot of deaths'.
     3        I think it means more than that and the question is
     4        whether, as you would contend is so, that sting is
     5        justified in any event.  I have expressed concern about
     6        indifference, because I think it is more positive than
     7        indifference.
     8
     9        By the way, I think indifference may be more difficult to
    10        prove, in fact, than inhumanity because people can do
    11        things which are inhumane, while not being indifferent.
    12        But that is another consideration.
    13
    14        You might say, for instance, it is all right saying that
    15        there are people like Barbara Crawford, who I did not hear
    16        from - this is just for the sake of argument - it is all
    17        right saying that she is very concerned for animal welfare
    18        and therefore there might be difficulties in showing that
    19        McDonald's are indifferent.  The fact is they are
    20        responsible for practices which are humane and they have
         enough influence and pack enough punch to improve those
    22        practices if they want to, so they are culpably responsible
    23        for the inhumanity.
    24
    25   MS. STEEL:   If they have enough influence, they are also
    26        indifferent if they do not do anything about it.
    27
    28   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do not try and persuade me that it does mean
    29        indifferent, because if it does mean indifferent, I think
    30        your role is a much more difficult one.
    31
    32   MS. STEEL:   Can I say something on this general point?  I think
    33        it is something like about 9 or 10 percent of the
    34        population that are vegetarians, so if we had had a jury in
    35        theory we would have at least one person on the jury who is
    36        a vegetarian, which might influence, you know, the view of
    37        whether or not it was defamatory to say that McDonald's
    38        were responsible for the deaths of large numbers of
    39        animals, or they are responsible for suffering.
    40
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I think that is completely irrelevant,
    42        reading Charlesworth.  It is just like in nutrition.  Let
    43        us assume that there is probably little doubt, for
    44        instance, on the meaning of nutrition, that if you had 12
    45        members of the jury, one of them would think that this
    46        leaflet meant that eating a McDonald's meal caused cancer
    47        of the breast and bowel and heart disease.  There would be
    48        another of the twelve who said, no, it doesn't mean that,
    49        it just means there has been a hypothesis of some kind of
    50        connection which has not been identified between a diet of 
    51        a certain kind and diseases of a certain kind. 
    52 
    53        But what one has to do is to look at what the putative
    54        ordinary reader would think and make a decision about
    55        that.  I do not think it basically matters that 10 percent
    56        of the population are completely against rearing and
    57        slaughtering of animals.
    58
    59        I am saying this so you can come back at me, if need be.
    60        Unless you can say that it is the putative ordinary reader