McLibel Case. The accusations of the leaflet can be divided into 7 sub categories, which are also very broad: Nutrition, Advertisement, Rainforest, Recycling and Waste, Employment, food poisoning and animals.

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McLibel

In 1986 two activist: Helen Steel and Dave Morris printed and distributed a 6-sided leaflet titled; ‘What’s Wrong With McDonalds? – Everything They Don’t Want You to Know.’ The leaflet accused McDonalds of exploiting children by advertising, promoting an unhealthy diet, exploiting their staff and being responsible for environmental damage and ill treatment of animals. In ’89 McDonalds hired two private investigator firms to infiltrate the Activists meeting and determine who was responsible for the production and distribution of the leaflet. In 1990 five of the activists were told to either apologise or go to court, 3 of the five did leaving Helen and Dave who stood up in court. The case lasted 2 and half years, and a total of 316 days in court. Since the case was a libel case, Helen and Dave were not allowed legal support and the case would only be presented to one judge. Due to the nature of libel cases everything that McDonalds were accused of had to be proved.  

The accusations of the leaflet can be divided into 7 sub categories, which are also very broad: Nutrition, Advertisement, Rainforest, Recycling and Waste, Employment, food poisoning and animals.

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The first, nutrition, McDonalds were promoting a diet which was high fat, low fibre which is believed to be linked to health issues such as cancer, heart disease, rising obesity and diabetes, issues which are believe to contribute to 3 quarters of western premature deaths. McDonalds argued that evidence was insufficient and that their food can be part of a balanced diet, this is untrue and that there is plenty of evidence to the fact that the food is unhealthy. They were not looking at whether the food was unhealthy or not but whether it was right for them to ...

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