While this incident is terrible, there's one thing Dr. Mann doesn't make entirely clear in the article.
The contact information for McDonald's France is quite easily found at http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts. It's not an e-mail address, but rather a phone number, but the way the article is written it's not at all clear if he's tried to contact them by their publicly available phone number?
He says that he tried to call, and his statement looks clear to me:
> I also tried calling the main number, at mcdonands.com: 1-800-244-6227, but got a voice recording that was totally unintelligible (very loud and distorted), and it appears this number does not work.
I tried the number just now, and in fact, it is exactly as he describes: you get a loud distorted unintelligible message for a 3-4 seconds and then it hangs up.
As Dr. Mann is likely calling from Canada, as I also am, it occurred to me that this particular 800 number might not work from Canada. Some USA-based 800 numbers work, and some don't -- it depends on the calling area that the 800-number subscriber wants to pay for.
Listening to the message a second time, I think that I can make out words about the "calling area", which would indicate why it's not working.
Except that number is for the US McDonalds. The French numbers would be +33 1 30 48 65 28 or +33 1 30 48 60 00 as stated on the contact page.
"I don't have the resources to take on a branch of a large multi-national corporation operating in a distant country" - doesn't really cut it when the contact page and number can be found on the Internet in 2 seconds of searching.
The contact information for McDonald's France is quite easily found at http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts. It's not an e-mail address, but rather a phone number, but the way the article is written it's not at all clear if he's tried to contact them by their publicly available phone number?