Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 20


     
     1        we have brought defence witnesses and evidence,
     2        authoritative defence witnesses and evidence to court to
     3        back up those criticisms, and in the light of all that, it
     4        is impossible for anyone to even think that there is a
     5        possibility of those criticisms being lies or that people
     6        that believe them to be motivated by malice, because the
     7        beliefs are completely reasonable.  We will come on to
     8        whether all those criticisms have been proven or not later
     9        on, but the question is they are certainly reasonable and
    10        have a founding in facts and public debate.
    11
    12        If I just look at the environment.  These are just very
    13        brief examples.  In the public domain, we have heard that
    14        Prince Phillip on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund
    15        criticised McDonald's, saying that they are responsible for
    16        the destruction of the Amazonian rainforests.  McDonald's
    17        have backed up the evidence about that incident.
    18
    19        We have seen in this courtroom the book Ecology 2000 that
    20        Miss Steel referred to when she was in the witness box,
    21        where on one page there was a picture of McDonald's golden
    22        arches, below it there was a picture of rainforests and
    23        underneath it says:  The hamburger connection, South and
    24        Central American cattle via McDonald's, the world's largest
    25        seller of hamburgers to millions of mouths.  In the
    26        process, millions of acres of tropical forest are being
    27        destroyed.
    28
    29        That is something which she was given, I think, well before
    30        she got involved with London Greenpeace.  We have seen the
    31        film that was shown on Channel 4 in this country,
    32        Jungleburger, a criticism of the effect of the hamburger
    33        industry on Costa Rican tropical forests, where McDonald's
    34        supply in that country.  The sales director states on
    35        camera that they are exporting beef for McDonald's in the
    36        USA, a statement which he has not denied making even though
    37        he has given evidence for McDonald's in this case before.
    38
    39        Also, it is a generally held view that the hamburger
    40        industry, and McDonald's is part of it, the biggest player,
    41        is responsible for destruction of rainforests.  It is not
    42        something that London Greenpeace invented.
    43
    44        Going on to whether McDonald's should have known this, that
    45        this was in the public domain, and that this was certainly
    46        either a fact or a contestable fact, McDonald's own letter
    47        in 1982 recognised the importance of rainforest.  This was
    48        the letter, I think, from Chicago about Brazil - I have not
    49        got it to hand, but we will come to it later - where they
    50        recognised the importance of rainforest, the damage that 
    51        the cattle ranching industry is doing to the Amazon. 
    52        I think they identified 38 percent of the destruction being 
    53        down to cattle ranching.  And also saying that they
    54        recognised in that letter, we say, that exports from
    55        rainforest countries would contribute to that destruction
    56        and they said for that reason they have a policy of only
    57        using Brazilian beef in Brazilian stores, which of course
    58        has now turned out not to be the case.  Only a year later
    59        they were exporting to the UK from Brazil.
    60

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