The overseas critics of fast food are far more diverse than America’s old Soviet bloc adversaries. Farmers, leftists, anarchists, nationalists, environmentalists, consumer advocates, educators, health officials, labor unions, and defenders of animal rights have found common ground in a campaign against the perceived Americanization of the world. Fast food has become a target because it is so ubiquitous and because it threatens a fundamental aspect of national identity: how, where, and what people choose to eat.
The longest-running and most systematic assault on fast food overseas has been waged by a pair of British activists affiliated with London Greenpeace. The loosely organized group was formed in 1971 to oppose French nuclear weapon tests in the South Seas. It later staged demonstrations in support of animal rights and British trade unions. It protested against nuclear power and the Falklands War. The group’s membership was a small, eclectic mix of pacifists, anarchists, vegetarians, and libertarians brought together by a commitment to nonviolent political action. They ran the organization without any formal leadership, even refusing to join the International Greenpeace movement.
A typical meeting of London Greenpeace attracted anywhere from three people to three dozen. In 1986 the group decided to target McDonald’s, later explaining that the company “epitomises everything we despise: a junk culture, the deadly banality of capitalism.” Members of London Greenpeace began to distribute a six-page leaflet called “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s? Everything they don’t want you to know.” It accused the fast food chain of promoting Third World poverty, selling unhealthy food, exploiting workers and children, torturing animals, and destroying the Amazon rain forest, among other things. Some of the text was factual and straightforward; some of it was pure agitprop. Along the top of the leaflet ran a series of golden arches punctuated by slogans like “McDollars, McGreedy, McCancer, McMurder, McProfits, McGarbage.” London Greenpeace distributed the leaflets for four years without attracting much attention. And then in September of 1990 McDonald’s sued five members of the group for libel, claiming that every statement in the leaflet was false.
The libel laws in Great Britain are far more unfavorable to a defendant than those in the United States. Under American law, an accuser must prove that the allegations at the heart of a libel case are not only false and defamatory, but also have been recklessly, negligently, or deliberately spread. Under British law, the burden of proof is on the defendant. Allegations that may harm someone’s reputation are presumed to be false. Moreover, the defendant in a British court has to use primary sources, such as firsthand witnesses and official documents, to prove the accuracy of a published statement. Secondary sources, including peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, are deemed inadmissible as evidence. And the defendant’s intentions are irrelevant — British libel case can be lost because of a truly innocent mistake.
The McDonald’s Corporation had for years taken advantage of British libel laws to silence its critics. During the 1980s alone, McDonald’s threatened to sue at last fifty British publications and organizations, including Channel 4, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, student publications, a vegetarian society, and a Scottish youth theater group. The tactic worked, prompting retractions and apologies. The cost of losing a libel case, in both legal fees and damages, could be huge.
The London Greenpeace activists being sued by McDonald’s had not written the leaflet in question; they had merely handed it to people. Nevertheless, their behavior could be ruled libelous. Fearing the potential monetary costs, three of the activists reluctantly appeared in court and apologized to McDonald’s. The other two decided to fight.
Helen Steel was a twenty-five-year-old gardener, minibus driver, and bartender who’d been drawn to London Greenpeace by her devotion to vegetarianism and animal rights. Dave Morris was a thirty-six-year-old single father, a former postal worker interested in labor issues and the power of multinational corporations. The two friends seemed to stand little chance in court against the world’s largest fast food chain. Steel had left school at seventeen, Morris at eighteen; and neither could afford a lawyer. McDonald’s, on the other hand, could afford armies of attorneys and had annual revenues at the time of about $18 billion. Morris and Steel were denied legal aid and forced to defend themselves in front of a judge, instead of a jury. But with some help from the secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the pair turned the “McLibel case” into the longest trial in British history and a public relations disaster for McDonald’s.
The McDonald’s Corporation had never expected the case to reach the courtroom. The burden on the defendants was enormous: Morris and Steel had to assemble witnesses and official documents to support the broad assertions in the leaflet. The pair proved to be indefatigable researchers, aided by the McLibel Support Campaign, an international network of activists. By the end of the trial, the court record included 40,000 pages of documents and witness statements, as well as 18,000 pages of transcripts.
McDonald’s had made a huge tactical error by asserting that everything in the leaflet was libelous — not only the more extreme claims (“McDonald’s and Burger King are… using lethal poisons to destroy vast areas of Central American rainforest”), but also the more innocuous ones (“a diet high in fat, sugar, animal products, and salt… is linked with cancers of the breast and bowel, and heart disease”). The blunder allowed Steel and Morris to turn the tables, putting McDonald’s on trial and forcing a public examination of the chain’s labor, marketing, environmental, nutrition, food safety, and animal welfare policies. Some of the chain’s top executives were forced to appear on the stand and endure days of cross-examination by the pair of self-taught attorneys. The British media seized upon the David-and-Goliath aspects of the story and made the trial front-page news.
After years of legal wrangling, the McLibel trial formally began in March of 1994. It ended more than three years later, when Justice Rodger Bell submitted an 800-page Judgement. Morris and Steel were found to have libeled McDonald’s. The judge ruled that the two had failed to prove most of their allegations — but had indeed proved some. According to Justice Bell’s decision, McDonald’s did “exploit” children through its advertising, endanger the health of customers who eat there several times a week, pay its restaurant workers unreasonably low wages, and bear responsibility for the cruelty inflicted upon animals by many of its suppliers. Morris and Steel were fined £60,000. The two promptly announced they would appeal the decision. “McDonald’s don’t deserve a penny,” Helen Steel said, “and in any event we haven’t got any money.”
Evidence submitted during the McLibel trial disclosed much about the inner workings of the McDonald’s Corporation. Many of its labor, food safety, and advertising practices had already been publicly criticized in the United States for years. Testimony in the London courtroom, however, provided new revelations about the company’s attitude toward civil liberties and freedom of speech. Morris and Steel were stunned to discover that McDonald’s had infiltrated London Greenpeace with informers, who regularly attended the group’s meetings and spied on its members.
The spying had begun in 1989 and did not end until 1991, nearly a year after the libel suit had been filed. McDonald’s had used subterfuge to find out who’d distributed the leaflets, and also learnt from its spies how Morris and Steel reacted to the company’s legal action. The company had employed at least seven different undercover agents. During some London Greenpeace meetings, about half the people in attendance were corporate spies. One spy broke into the London Greenpeace office, took photographs, and stole documents. Another had a six-month affair with a member of London Greenpeace while informing on his activities. McDonald’s spies inadvertently spied on each other, unaware that the company was using at least two different detective agencies. They participated in demonstrations against McDonald’s and gave out anti-McDonald’s leaflets.