Playing Hardball

As for the "McLibel" case, I think both parties are at fault and just kind of ridiculous. I think it was a little wrong for private citizens to be printing materials against a whole company because likely they are very bias and their are falsehoods in what they are printing up for people. Also, I think it is ridiculous to claim that it is a fast food restaurants fault for "tempting customers with food too high in fat, sugar and salt...." It is not the job of a restaurant necessarily to keep in mind the health of the customer. People should have the choice to eat unhealthy food. Although in general I agree with a trans fat ban, I also see why is it a person's choice to eat unhealthy food and McDonalds is a business not everyone's parent and doctor. On the other hand, McDonalds was completely ridiculous by sueing over this. There is no way this small pamplet was going to bring their company down and it was just a waste of money on both sides. I understand if it had been just completely innaccurate (the pamphlet) but since it had accuracies they shouldn't have gone out and sued. They could have tried to counteract the claims in better, more productive and less embarassing ways.

I honesty am a little appalled that the NRDC jumped on such a claim from an animal study and put it out like it was a fact. Having learned a lot about trials and chemicals with animals, they give animals excessive, unnaturally large doses in order to induce an effect. There are alot of ways that animal studies do not match up to human results. Although I think pesticides and herbicides are bad and we should pursue more sustainable methods, I think that the NRDC should look into things more before they become alarmist. No child is drinking enough apple juice to give them cancer and there are much more things to worry about that are more important, like a healthy diet overall and exercising. However with the Oprah thing, it is just true that they feel ground up cattle, they may not have mad cow disease and I"m sure if they knew they did they might not use the cows, but that is a fact that they feed other cows. I think that it was ok for Oprah to talk about this and it is just her choice to not eat ground beef if she thinks its gross. Unfortunately since she is so influential, more people hear it, but thats the nature of celebrities making comments. They should be care though before they do it because they are so influential and they should make sure they really have all the facts.

However, if these reporters and citizens did not commit libel or whatever, we might not have any information about bad practices so I guess it is good that they take the risk to get out information, as long as it is accurate and not too alarmist in nature.

I had no idea that price fixing was going on, I remember learning about it in economics in high school but I never really thought about it after that. In my opinion companies should have to compete for business, that is the essence of our economy to me. I understand how formulas cannot be very different for each other and price fixing helps to ensure they make money but it makes me feel a bit indignant that companies could be forcing up prices higher than they should be. Although I doubt consumers would care so much if they somehow price fixed down....