MACDONALDS;LIBEL CASE FINDINGS AND SANCTIONS

Motion Text

That this House notes with alarm that in the recent McLibel case of the McDonald's Corporation and McDonald's Restaurants Ltd vs Steel and Morris, Mr Justice Bell found as a fact that McDonald's employs a marketing strategy which 'exploits children by using them to pressurise their parents' and has 'pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which its food did not match', pays 'low wages, thereby helping to depress wages in the catering trade' and is strongly antipathetic to any idea of unionisation', and is 'culpably responsible for cruel practices in the rearing and slaughter' of animals; believes that this constitutes a pattern of deceptive and exploitative business practices; further believes that multinational corporations should be subject to rigorous public accountability; and therefore calls for effective sanctions against McDonald's to end such practices and to force the company to pay appropriate compensation or damages.