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Subject: McLibel perspective from Permaculture International Journal #56
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 16:31:39 +1000
From: Steve Payne <pcjournal@peg.apc.org>
Please find following the feature article "Who Us on Trial? Fast
food under the grill" which appears in the latest issue of the
Permaculture International Journal (PIJ). It is published by
Permaculture International, a community-based, non-profit company
committed to people care and earth repair. Each quarterly issue of
the PIJ looks at appropriate technologies, self-sufficiency,
organic gardening and sustainable agriculture, and is distributed
in over 70 countries. Anyone requiring further information about
PIJ can contact: The Editor, PO Box 6039 South Lismore NSW
Australia 2480. Tel: int+ (0)66 220020 Fax: (0)66 220579. E-mail:
pcjournal@peg.apc.org
Editorial - Permaculture International Journal #56
Fast food. Fast lives. Fast deaths. Fresh food. Observant lives.
A fighting chance. Jude and Michel Fanton of the Seed Savers
Network say there are many things we are losing in this world
because of fast food chains like McDonalds. One is diversity of
food and heritage crops. Another is the simple act of sharing our
food. Instead we have one burger, one serve of chips, one drink.
In the PIJ we have often written about the difference our
individual actions make in the wider scheme of the world. Eating
is another. It is not just that buying junk food is helping wipe
out diversity, it's the effect on our own bodies, how this makes
us feel and act day-to-day. By covering the McDonalds story in
this issue, in which two British activists have been taken to
court for libel by the fast food giant, we wanted to play our part
in fighting against the standardisation of food. On television,
the Australian version of 60 Minutes covered the McLibel case,
although completely missing the bigger picture. Interviewed on the
program was well-known legal eagle Geoffrey Robertson who said he
ate McDonalds food and liked it.
We want to make it socially
unacceptable for people to rely on fast foods - at least until the
food chains make a significant change. We want to wake them up! We
want to question their ethics and guide them in a new direction.
Permaculture does not want beef-lot meat or monoculture wheat.
Instead, organic grains, fresh juices - food that means something.
Our story on the Seikatsu Club shows there is another way. Imagine
the effect on a mass scale if McDonalds or any other mega fast
food chain took a major step towards healthy food and put the
interests of the environment and humans well ahead of profits. The
world's richest man, Microsoft king Bill Gates, is known for
eating McDonalds burgers. What if he stopped, and then told the
world why?
Steve Payne - Editor for the PIJ team
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Who's on Trial? Fast food under the grill.
by Efrem Lloyd
Two London protestors gave fast food clown Ronald McDonald a kick
and ended up before quite a different wig. The McLibel trial, as
it has become known, is detailing the case against fast food
multinationals in London's High Court. It will culminate some time
next year in Helen Steel and David Morris telling the world there
is a better way. It's permaculture of course.
UK environmental activist, Helen Steel has had to leave the farm
and doesn't get much time to dig in her London allotment anymore.
Dave Morris has a garden in the backyard of his London house but
he, too, doesn't get much time to spend there. Instead, Steel and
Morris turn up each day to London's High Court to face a barrage
of the world's highest paid lawyers and Queen's Counsel to defend
themselves in what has become one of the world's longest running
libel trials.
Steel and Morris are defendants in an action
brought against them by McDonald's, the world-wide hamburger
empire which took grave offence at a pamphlet handed out by London
Greenpeace critical of its food quality and general corporate
operations. This may be just another case of environmental
radicalism and, in the view of permaculture founder Bill Mollison,
a rerun of old evidence. But this time the evidence has got legs
- the so-called McLibel trial has already been going more than 12
months and is expected to last another six months at least - and
it is reaching groups not known for their environmental savvy. It
is highlighting the fact that in choosing which food we buy we are
casting a vote for or against sustainable production. The Wall
Street Journal, the international business newspaper, has run a
front page feature on it. Mainstream union organisations have
pledged their support to Morris and Steel and the $24 billion a
year McDonald's corporation must be wondering what it has got
itself into.
This is good news for permaculture. It is focussing
mainstream attention on the value of healthy food, the threat of
monocultures on genetic diversity and presenting an avenue to
publicise an alternative view. A fact that has been overlooked in
much of the reporting of the McLibel trial to date is that the
message in the pamphlet which so upset McDonald's was that there
is another way to go. "There are loads of cheap, tasty and
nutritious alternatives to a diet based on the decomposing flesh
of dead animals," the brochure said. "Fresh fruit of all kinds, a
huge variety of local and exotic vegetables, cereals, pulses,
beans, rice, nuts, wholegrain foods, soya drinks etc." It said a
vegan Britain would be self-sufficient on only 25 per cent of the
agricultural land presently available and encouraged people to get
together with friends and grow their own vegetables. "There are
over 700,000 allotments in Britain - and countless gardens. "The
pleasure of preparing healthy food and sharing good meals has a
political importance too," it said. "It is a vital part of the
process of ordinary people taking control of their lives to create
a better society, instead of leaving their futures in the cynical,
greedy hands of multinational corporations."
Somewhere towards the
end of the marathon libel trial Morris and Steel will get their
chance to tell the London High Court about their alternatives. In
the meantime they face total bankruptcy unless they can prove to
the sitting judge the claims made in the London Greenpeace
factsheet.
In an interview, Morris told the Permaculture
International Journal the whole trial was about suppressing the
criticism so the alternatives don't come forward. "If there are
alternatives they are alternative to something that is destructive
or damaging or undesirable," he said. "They [McDon-ald's] are
trying to suppress McDon-ald's as being thought to be an
undesirable way of doing things in the hope that people don't
start looking for alternatives." Steel and Morris are defending
themselves in the trial. At McDonald's request they were denied
their right to a jury trial because, the company argued, the
issues were "too complex" to allow their assessment by a jury.
The Trial During the course of the trial approximately 180
witnesses from the UK and around the world are giving evidence in
court. They include environmental and nutritional experts, trade
unionists, former McDonald's employees, animal welfare experts and
top executives. Among those already called have been the former
Assistant Attorney General of Texas who, in 1987, threatened legal
action against McDonald's to prevent them claiming in their
adverts that their food was RnutritiousS. The issues at the heart
of the trial for Steel and Morris are:
% The connection between multinational companies, cash crops and
starvation in the third world.
% The responsibility of corporations like McDonald's for damage to
the environment, including rainforests.
% The wasteful and harmful effects of the mountains of packaging
used by McDonald's and other companies.
% McDonald's promotion and sale of food with a low fibre, high
fat, saturated fat, sodium and sugar content, and the links
between a diet of this type and the major degenerative diseases in
western society, including heart disease and cancer.
% The exploitation of children through the use of advertisements
and gimmicks to sell products.
% The treatment of animals, working conditions and hostility to
trade unions.
Morris said he had so far been very encouraged by
the amount of information that he and Steel had been able to
extract revealing the inner workings of a corporation. Equally
impressive had been the admissions made by McDonald's executives
and expert witnesses. Admissions like that from Professor
Wheelock, McDonald's consultant on nutrition. Professor Wheelock
defined the word nutritious to mean "contains nutrients". He then
accepted that all foods have nutrients. When asked to define "junk
food" he said it was "whatever a person doesn't like" (in his case
semolina). McDonald's QC then intervened to say that McDonald's
was not objecting to the description of their food as junk food.
Other evidence so far has included that of Dr Neal Barnard,
President of the US Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
and an expert on nutrition and health that "many products sold at
McDonald's are high in fat and cholesterol, and low in fibre and
certain vitamins". During Dr Barnard's evidence, Richard Rampton,
for McDonald's said "we would all agree" that there is a link
between a high fat, low fibre diet and cancer of the breast and
colon".
Further evidence was given about McDonald's targeting of
children through advertising because of the pressure they could
apply on parents. McDonald's UK President told the court however
that the character Ronald McDonald was intended not to "sell food"
to children, but to promote the "McDonald's experience". It was
also revealed in court that Geoffrey Guiliano, the main Ronald
McDonald actor in the 1980's had quit and publicly apologised
stating, "I brainwashed youngsters into doing wrong. I want to say
sorry to children everywhere for selling out to concerns who make
millions by murdering animals."
So concerned has McDonald's been
about the dissemination of information from the court case around
the world, it withdrew an earlier agreement to provide the
defendants with a copy of the daily court transcripts. The
original agreement was that McDonald's would provide transcripts
for all parties including the judge. After the McDonald's decision
to withhold transcripts the sitting judge refused to accept copies
unless they were also given to Morris and Steel. Morris and Steel
launched a public appeal to raise the 35,000 pounds they needed to
purchase daily transcripts for the remainder of the trial. Those
transcripts will be necessary to help spread the alternative
message and continue to provoke debate about what impact the
multinational fast food industry generally is having on the world
which goes well beyond nutrition.
Eating Without Sharing
Michel and Jude Fanton from the Seed Savers Network in Australia have a
particular problem with the industry's reliance on uniformity.
"McDonald's is the icon of the fast food system and its hallmark
is sameness," they say. "It is not just the uniforms worn by the
staff, but the very sameness of product over the whole globe. Only
predictable ingredients are used. "Genetically hybrid seeds are
planted by the square kilometre. Taste and nutrition are not on
the list of priorities. Anything bearing a hint of difference does
not stand a chance. "No room for fantasy here. The tomatoes have
to be the same colour, have the same solids content, and be the
right shape to fit into a hamburger which itself fits into uniform
packaging."
The Fanton's claim one of the biggest dangers of the
fast food industry is the impact it has on genetic diversity.
"The number of species available or used as food is a good
indication of the genetic diversity left in our fields. Processed
foods typically make up 90 per cent of what developed countries
consume and comes from an abysmally narrow range of plants. "Out
of 1200 species of food that are available, only 30 make up the
bulk of our diet. "When we buy from a supermarket or from fast
food chains, we know that we sponsor the politics of uniformity.
This endangers the genetic diversity of tomorrow's food. It is a
genetic downward spiral. The more uniform food we eat today, the
more it will be in the future." Furthermore, the cost
effectiveness of fast food relies on monopoly so that 90 per cent
of all chickens are produced on 10 per cent of all poultry farms
and 75 per cent of grains come from eight per cent of the cereal
farms.
Of the varieties of plants and animals, a handful of
homogeneous hybrids have largely replaced the cornucopia of the
past. But Michel and Jude say their greatest objection to
McDonald's is that it feeds the worst of our Western habits,
eating without sharing.
Eating Up the Earth
The Fanton's concern
about loss of plant diversity is shared by the American
organisation Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet.In a recent
issue of its Green Guide newsletter, Mothers and Others said in
choosing food we are casting a vote for or against sustainable
food production. It quotes writer/farmer Wendell Berry as saying:
"How we eat determines to a considerable extent how the world is
used." The industrialisation of food production has left powerful
global food conglomerates now making most of the critical
decisions about what foods to produce, where and how they are
grown, treated and handled. Indeed, four multinational food
companies now control the production and marketing of over 40 per
cent of four basic commodities: corn, soybeans, wheat and rice.
Treated as commodities to be bought and sold at a profit, foods
are bred to maximise production. Industrial traits are preferred,
such as a plant's ability to withstand the battery of heavy
machinery or regular assault by toxic pesticides, uniformity in
ripening, tensile strength for shipping, and cosmetic appearance.
While traditional agriculture depended on 80,000 species of
plants, industrial agriculture now provides most of the food on
our planet from just 150 varieties. The National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) in the United States has found that "nearly all
plant-breeding programs in the US emphasise yield, uniformity,
market acceptability and pest resistance, but not nutritional
quality." "Indeed,S Green Guide said, "breeding plants for the
characteristics desirable for industrial production and marketing
often lowers the plants nutritional values."
Working With the Enemy
But while London Greenpeace has chosen confrontation to
get its message across about fast food, GreenLife Society Finland,
the Finnish branch of GreenLife Society International, has taken
the advice of Gandhi; "Hate sin, not the sinner" and "Love your
enemy". The group decided not to work against McDonald's or
anything else but to work for sustainable and responsible fast
food. Instead of opposing the companies and making their workers
afraid of losing their jobs, they presented a vision of
sustainable fast food. "We have better chances to affect the
companies when we say that we, too, are trying to develop their
business further," GreenLife spokesperson Oras Tynkkynen said.
"We don't want to harm their business, but make it sustainable.
They can't dismiss us saying the usual thing ("they are a bunch of
anarchist opposing everything"). "If they are not willing to
change, people will start to question why. Why are they against
environmental protection and animal rights? "I think the approach
we have been using means avoiding needless juxtapositions. Through
dialogue it tries to make friends among the Renemies". "But first
and foremost it means understanding that there are no good and
bad people, no black and white, just different shades of grey -
or should I say green." Note: McDonald's Australia, when contacted
by the Permaculture International Journal, declined to discuss
anything associated with the trial.
Anyone wishing to respond to this article can contact the PIJ:
The Editor, PO Box 6039 South Lismore NSW Australia 2480. Tel:
int+ 61 + (0)66 220020 Fax: Int + 61 + (0)66 220579. E-mail:
pcjournal@peg.apc.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. McLibel Support Campaign Press Office
PO Box 62 Phone/Fax 802-586-9628
Craftsbury VT 05826-0062 Email dbriars@world.std.com
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