Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 55
1
My Lord, that is not the end of it. Ever since awareness
2 of the importance of the world's rainforests became
general, McDonald's has had a positive policy that no beef
3 from any recently deforested rainforest area in the world
should find its way into their products. This policy
4 which has been in existence for many years, as Mr. Ray
Cesca from the parent Corporation will tell your Lordship,
5 was reduced into writing in 1989. The reference is pink
bundle XVI/1.
6
My Lord, there are two additional small points perhaps
7 which illustrate the fallacy of the idea that McDonald's
use of beef even remotely threatens the environment or the
8 economies of the so-called under-developed or Third World
countries. The first is this, it relates do Costa Rica,
9 that from 1980 to 1991 the amount of beef consumed by
McDonald's restaurants in Costa Rica (there are now
10 I think nine of them) averaged 0.2 per cent of that
country's total annual beef consumption. I do not have
11 the precise figures for Guatemala at the moment, but they
are thought to be similar.
12
Second, the defendants, as your Lordship knows, have said
13 in their defence that McDonald's in Germany uses beef
fattened on meal from soya beans which is grown on
14 recently deforested rainforest land in Brazil. This
assertion is every bit as false as all the others.
15
The evidence of Professor Doktor Hans Schumm (yellow
16 bundle XIV/46) will show the following. First, the beef
from McDonald's in Germany comes almost entirely from
17 dairy cows which, one would expect, are raised to produce
milk, butter and cheese but not beef, so that their
18 eventual use in hamburgers is an accidental bi-product.
19 Second, those dairy cows are fed largely on grass and
silage. At most, soya meal forms 1.8 per cent of their
20 diet. Half of that 1.8 per cent comes from Argentina and
half from the USA. None of it comes from Brazil, nor from
21 any other country which has rainforests.
22 Last, the soya beans of which that meal is a bi-product
are, in any case, grown primarily not to feed cattle, but
23 to produce oil for human consumption.
24 My Lord, I am nearly at an end apart from the video tape
that I would like to show to your Lordship before I finish
25 the opening. There is one other point which I ought to
mention because it has popped its way into the latest form
26 of the leaflet, and that is methane. It has nothing
whatever to do with the rainforests, and, your Lordship
27 may think, very little to do with the case. I have to
confess that I do not regard it as an entirely serious
28 point. However, the defendants rely on it and they put it
into the latest version of the leaflet which appeared
29 yesterday.
30 Your Lordship will forgive perhaps certain humour in
this. As part of their digestive process cattle produce
