Day 024 - 15 Sep 94 - Page 14

     
     1        truth about the nutrition and ingredient information of
     2        those products in a way that was most readily available to
     3        the consumers, to see it as they ate it.  But that was
     4        merely conjecture on our part.  What we heard from the
     5        companies was that it was logistically very difficult, if
     6        not impossible, for them to do that.
     7
     8        In general, that is all I can recall about what they told
     9        us.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Give me an example -- take some item of
    12        McDonald's food, say, a regular hamburger or something
    13        like that.  Tell me what sort of information would be
    14        ingredient information and what sort of information would
    15        be nutritional information, according to the terms which
    16        you are using?
    17        A.  The ingredients of a regular hamburger, I think, would
    18        be the buns, the bread and the content of the bread.  They
    19        would have to disclose what went into making the bread;
    20        the hamburger, the meat, any additives to that meat,
         although I do not believe there were any.
    22
    23   Q.   They could just say "pure beef" or "beef" in relation to
    24        that?
    25        A.  I believe so; both the way that bread is broken down
    26        and specifically the way that meat is to be disclosed are
    27        governed by federal regulations of two different
    28        agencies.  The Food and Drug Administration governs
    29        disclosure of the bread product and for an unknown
    30        division of responsibilities the United States Department
    31        of Agriculture governs disclosure.
    32
    33   Q.   Leave that.  Nutritional information, on the other hand?
    34        A.  Nutritional information would be sodium, fat,
    35        saturated fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, information as
    36        to the nutritional content of the product, not what went
    37        into making up the product, which is the ingredients, the
    38        pickles, the ketchup, whatever.  But when you take that
    39        entire product and analyse it, I do not know, I suspect
    40        they put it in some kind of a fancy blender and stir it
         up, then analyse what is in that overall.  That is the
    42        nutritional information.
    43
    44   MS. STEEL:   The general position that you have said of the
    45        companies, was that true for McDonald's as well?
    46        A.  I do not recall anybody having a different position.
    47        I, unfortunately, no longer have access to the notes
    48        I made from that meeting, nor can the Texas Attorney
    49        General office locate those notes.  So, I am having to go
    50        on my memory from those meetings. 
    51 
    52        As I said, McDonald's was not under the spotlight here. 
    53        It was a series of meetings to deal with the positions
    54        taken and concerns of a series of companies at that time.
    55        We, therefore, were considering pretty much everything the
    56        company said as going into the mix of what the industry
    57        believed.  That was the purpose of the meetings, not to
    58        learn what would McDonald's do but what would the industry
    59        do.
    60