He is the third generation to work this 2,000 acre farm and clearly takes great pride in the 300-odd calves he breeds here every year. My journey began deep in the Northamptonshire countryside, where I stand in a barn full of cattle with farmer Robert Knight. The youngest, aged four, is a more willing visitor - if only to get her hands on the latest promotional toy - but she is easily outvoted when it comes to family outings.Īs a result, I’m lucky to eat more than one Big Mac in a year.
My wife Charlotte, survives on a diet of mainly rye bread and juiced kale, while the older two - aged nine and 12 -would rather have a tuna baguette at Pret a Manger than a Happy Meal.
used so-called ‘pink slime’ to bulk out its burgers.ĭestined for dinner: Tom Rawstorne is pictured with Robert Knight's herd of cattleĪs a 43-year-old father of three daughters living in the Kent countryside, my opportunities to sample McDonald’s fare are surprisingly few and far between. It looked less like meat, and more like a piece of industrial foam insulation.įaced with falling international sales, last month the company launched an online campaign to counter a range of McDonald’s ‘myths’.Īs part of this new openness, they admitted that for seven years until 2011, McDonald’s in the U.S. More recently, a particularly unappetising photograph of a frozen McRib, a menu item popular in North America, went viral. There was more bad publicity with Super Size Me - Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film that documented the drastic effect an exclusively McDonald’s diet had on his physical and psychological wellbeing. While it ended with the chain being awarded damages, critical comments in the judge’s ruling, and the David-and-Goliath nature of the legal battle meant it was a PR disaster for the U.S. The company spent £10 million suing the activists Dave Morris and Helen Steel for what it said were defamatory claims made in leaflets the couple produced about McDonald’s and its business practices. Having been hit in the late Nineties by the outbreak of mad cow disease, public sentiment in Britain also turned against the chain by the long-running, so-called ‘McLibel’ trial.
It was quite an event - the mayor cut the ribbon and hundreds queued around the block to get a taste of the American culinary dream.īut as with most love stories, the relationship between the British and McDonald’s hasn’t always run smoothly. Next week marks a very significant date in British gastronomical history: it’s the 40th anniversary of the day we fell in love with fast food.įour decades have passed since the first McDonald’s opened in Woolwich, South London. Four decades have passed since the first McDonald’s opened in Woolwich, South London
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