Western Daily Press (Saturday)
You don’t mess with McDonald’s customers
Animal rights activists’ latest protest target – the nation’s favourite fast food outlet – has Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger smouldering like a burger on a hot griddle, as he tells Defra Secretary George Eustice
DEAR George, The arrogance of some minority, single-interest groups rarely fails to leave me less than astonished, not to say appalled.
Take for instance, the shenanigans at the weekend which saw animal rights activists targeting four McDonald’s distribution centres and disrupting deliveries.
What was their avowed intent? Apparently to force the chain to become 100 per cent plant-based by 2025. Absolutely unbelievable.
On whose authority are they making those demands other than that of a tiny minority of the population which has chosen to espouse the vegan creed? (For the moment. While it’s fashionable.)
As I have said before, if you don’t want to eat meat that’s fine. Pass me your share and enjoy the lentils. But don’t preach and screech your warped doctrine in my ears because all that is going to do is to erode what small reserves of empathy I have for your cause – though naturally I would defend with vigour your right to adhere to it.
Of course I can see the flawed logic behind choosing McDonald’s: it’s one of the best-known names in the fast food business; its stores are the most visited and therefore the effects of any disruption are likely to be experienced by the maximum number of people. A lot of bang for the buck in other words.
But McDonald’s customers represent a very faithful clientele mainly consisting of confirmed carnivores who are not going to take too kindly to their double quarter pounders with cheese suddenly not being available.
Indeed such might be their annoyance at being deprived that they could well harden their attitudes against the minority of ethical ‘warriors’ who were responsible for the dearth.
Life should have taught us all that you don’t carry people with you by seeking to impose your beliefs in this way, and particularly by insisting on an international corporation which has bestowed all the benefits of the Big Mac on mankind adopting a sourcing and sales policy which is diametrically opposed to its current, long-standing one – and all within the space of three years. Get real.
Anyway the last time I checked McDonald’s credentials seemed pretty sound with the beef being either English or Irish and the eggs free-range.
There is, of course, the matter of whether what it sells is actually wholesome. I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone availing themselves of its gastronomic delights on a daily basis, though in all honesty don’t regard someone making an occasional purchase as putting their health at any kind of risk. But nutrition evidently wasn’t the issue here – and in any case don’t get me started on the nutritional deficiencies which have been highlighted in some vegan products.
You would have thought if these people had any sense they would have chosen a decent target such as Uncle Sam’s industrialisation of hormone-rich beef production which leads to so much deforestation in order to plant soy beans for feed.
But then they might find it difficult to criticise the production of the very legume which they consume in various forms as an acceptable alternative to real meat, mightn’t they? Yours ever,
Ian