Activists blockade McDonald's distribution centers in UK

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

LONDON (AP) — Animal rights protesters are blockading four McDonald’s distribution centres in the U.K. in an attempt to get the burger chain to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.

Animal Rebellion said Saturday that trucks and bamboo structures are being used at the distribution sites in Hemel Hempstead, Basingstoke, Coventry and Heywood, Greater Manchester, to stop lorries from leaving the depots.

The group said it intends to remain at the sites for at least 24 hours, causing “significant disruption” to the McDonald’s supply chain, adding that it will affect some 1,300 restaurants.

“The meat and dairy industry is destroying our planet: causing huge amounts of rainforest deforestation, emitting immense quantities of greenhouse gases and killing billions of animals each year,” said James Ozden, a spokesman for the group.



Animal Rebellion protesters suspended from a bamboo structure and on top of a van, being monitored by police officers outside a McDonald's distribution site in Hemel Hempstead, England, Saturday May 22, 2021. Animal rights protesters are blockading four McDonald’s distribution centres in the U.K. in an attempt to get the burger chain to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025. Animal Rebellion said Saturday that trucks and bamboo structures are being used at the distribution sites in Hemel Hempstead, Basingstoke, Coventry and Heywood, Greater Manchester, to stop lorries from leaving depots. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/europe-blockades-business-960e82b27435408f32b641ac4b19e0a1

[Roy Rolling]

1. The source of gasses

Animal foods/slaughter create greenhouse gasses. Strange, nobody protests animal confinement and slaughter until it affects them with greenhouse gas problems.

But any port in a storm is safer.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. CruzCon will be calling them ANTIFA by next week. Imagine the impact on hamberders. /nt

[elias7]

3. Random- 99% of restaurants serve meat; Inaccurate- since agriculture is only 10% of emissions

90% of emissions are from burning of fossil fuels - industry, transportation, electricity, commercial and residential heating. Why pick on the food industry at the exclusion of other industries when it is not even one of the bigger players?

Not a fan of McDonald’s but why are they being picked on? Further, they have been quite responsive through the years, changing the oils they use for frying, adding other healthy options, listing nutritional info, pushing for increasing minimum wage. They are blocking a burger joint for not committing to becoming plant based in 4 years? How about every other non-vegan restaurant and grocery store and food service place?

[cinematicdiversions]

12. Honestly changing the fry oil from beef tallow

Made for less tasty and more unhealthy fries.

[George II]

4. I see they drove up to that plant in a big gas guzzling truck.

[oldsoftie]

7. HA!

[Wolf Frankula]

15. Because it's only Other people who should consume less.

Not Us. Vegetarians are very tasty when cooked properly.

Wolf

[3Hotdogs]

5. I recall a book about McD suing 2 Brit welfare recipients for defamation/libel.

They were protesting factory farms run by McD suppliers. McD sent them and other protesters "cease and desist" letters. All complied but the two. McD then sued.

The trial went on for months as the protesters bombarded the court with document after document.

It went south for McD after a corporate executive made disparaging comments about the protesters to the British press. The protesters then sued McD for defamation.

I don't recall exactly how it ended but it didn't go well for McD.

Google: McLibel case. The welfare recipients ended up with 57,000 pound reward from the British government, awarded by the European Council on Human Rights.

[paleotn]

6. If McD had any sense....

they dropped it...quietly. Hard to imagine someone in corp legal not advising against. That it's a loser in public opinion and maybe even the courts. Just let things die down. But, oh no.

Business schools should add courses called "picking the hills you're willing to die on" and "keep your GD mouth shut". That might curtail some this stupidness.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Years, not months; another important part of the case was police provocation and sex

In the course of the UK undercover policing relationships scandal it was revealed that one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" was Bob Lambert, an undercover police officer who infiltrated London Greenpeace; John Dines, another undercover officer, was also Helen Steel's partner for two years; she was unaware of his true identity and motives. [32][33]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case#Post_court_developments

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees.

The true identity of one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" is Bob Lambert, a police officer who used the alias Bob Robinson in his five years infiltrating the London Greenpeace group, is revealed in a new book about undercover policing of protest, published next week.

McDonald's famously sued green campaigners over the roughly typed leaflet, in a landmark three-year high court case, that was widely believed to have been a public relations disaster for the corporation. Ultimately the company won a libel battle in which it spent millions on lawyers.

Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) – a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 – and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/mclibel-leaflet-police-bob-lambert-mcdonalds

The controversy over Dines dates back to 1987 when the police gave him the identity of an eight-year boy who had died of leukaemia and went undercover posing as an anti-capitalist activist for five years to infiltrate environmental groups.

During that time, he met Steel, a longstanding social justice campaigner, and started a two-year relationship, telling her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

He concealed from her the fact he was a member of a secret Metropolitan police undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, that was tasked with spying on political groups.

By the summer of 1991, Dines appeared to start having a mental breakdown, telling Steel he wanted to run away to escape his inner demons. He told her his parents had abused him.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/09/undercover-uk-police-spy-apologises-after-being-tracked-down-by-woman-he-deceived

The leaflet was distributed in 1986; McDonalds started the libel case in 1990.

McDonalds came out of it looking like they over-reacted; but the real culprit was the British state, which had libel laws beneficial to firms or people who could afford big lawyer fees to crush the average person; and which used the police in awful ways against targets they should have been ignoring.

[SouthBayDem]

8. Then eat something other than McDonald's.

It's no secret that McDonald's and other big fast food chains have questionable business practices, but is this protest supposed to deliver any real outcomes or change anyone's minds?

[Steelrolled]

10. "is this protest supposed to deliver any real outcomes or change anyone's minds?"

I reckon they don't think much about this. It seems to be a trait in a number of protest groups.

[George II]

16. Harkening back to WKRP when the seniors protested the format change, one senior commented:

"I'm here to meet chicks!"

[Dial H For Hero]

11. But that wouldn't garner headlines and let them bask in attention they receive from these antics.

[Steelrolled]

9. If Animal Rebellion wants to annoy much of the general public

they are succeeding.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. I don't think the public care much about distribution centres

Inconveniencing the company, but not the public (unless they do it for many days in a row), is a pretty good way to get publicity without bad feeling.

[Steelrolled]

17. It said they intended to disrupt the supply chain

Not sure of the likelihood of them doing that, but if people don't get their Big Macs, they will not be amused.

[JI7]

18. Fucking idiots. If they were serious about this issue and not just attention seekers

for themselves than they would promote vegetarian food by doing things like promoting those businesses and showing people why they should ar least try to cut back on meat.