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: McSpotlight: It should be pointed out that it was McDonald's who sued the McLibel defendants; it was also McDonald's who hired people to break into the London Greenpeace office; it was also McDonald's who unlawfully obtained confidential police records to try and prosecute the McLibel defendants.: As for quality, let the McDonald's-employed expert witness do the talking...
: A UK 'McFact' card states: "every consignment of beef arriving at the [McKeys] meat plant is subject to a total of 36 quality control checks, carried out by a team of qualified technologists. If a consignment should fail on any one check, it will be rejected by McDonald's." All the raw beef consignments are microbiologically tested, and categorised as 'satisfactory', 'passable', and 'unsatisfactory'. David Walker (Chairman of McKeys, the sole supplier of the company's UK hamburgers) stated that 'unsatisfactory' relates to beef which has a total colony of more than 10 million bacteria per gram. He then admitted that such consignments are, in fact, not rejected and are used for McDonald's burgers.
: Taken from our Great McQuotes pag
Yes, McDonald's did sue. Why? Because their reputation was on the line. They don't call it McLibel for nothing. The "McLibel Defendants" were sued because they chose to place the responsibility and blame for all the world's problems on McDonald's shoulders.
Regarding the McKeys plant...The people who are blatantly disregarding the policy to reject the meat are the ones who are responsible. When you go to a supermarket and purchase a package of meat, can you guarantee your family that it is safe? You have to rely on the information that you receive from the store and the supplier. McDonald's sets their policy and regulation requirements and they go in and do follow-up visits to ensure that they are being met, but in reality they cannot control what goes on in the plant when they are not there.
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McSpotlight: You really think that a couple of dozen people handing out 2,000 leaflets really poses a serious threat to a transnational like McDonald's?
(2,000 leaflets were handed out before the trial began. Since the trial began, 2 million leaflets have been handed out.)
Why could McDonald's not answer their critics without resorting to court?; their tactics were pure and simple bullying; 'we are bigger and more powerful than you, so shut up or we'll sue you'.
As for the McKeys plant, McDonald's were informed of this and made no effort to change suppliers; they knew that safety levels were being ignored and made no efforts to tighten things up.
Furthermore, McDonald's continued to use a method which didn't cook hamburgers sufficiently against the evidence of their own expert;
'McDonald's have refused to call their own expert witness on food poisoning, Colin Clarke, who prepared a detailed report following a visit he made to three company stores. The court heard that, regarding the cooking of hamburgers (which he had tested), Mr Clark in his statement "recommends that 73 degrees C be the internal minimum temperature of the final product, and that their temperatures were not reaching that in all cases. The minimum was, in fact, 70 degrees C."'
