Subject: McLibel perspective from Permaculture International Journal #56 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 16:31:39 +1000 From: Steve Payne 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to the "mclibel" listserve, send email To: majordomo@world.std.com Subject: Body: subscribe mclibel To unsubscribe, change the body to "unsubscribe mclibel"