Day 286 - 24 Oct 96 - Page 25
1 MR. MORRIS: Right. Now, I think these are very significant
2 documents because they have been prepared for McDonald's by
3 an expert upon which McDonald's are basing any knowledge
4 that they do have.
5
6 MR JUSTICE BELL: Who is the expert?
7
8 MR. MORRIS: I do not know actually. I think they were
9 prepared by -- I can't remember Mr. Cesca's evidence on
10 this. Something about -- is it the local embassy for him?
11 I got the impression... That will have to be checked,
12 I think, exactly who prepared them. But he had asked for
13 expert advice and this was the advice he got, upon which,
14 presumably, he based his opinions on the subject.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Right. Let us assume all that is fair
17 enough. You point out the things which you particularly --
18 I have made some underlinings, but I want to know what you
19 particularly say.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Well, if we go through it in turn, if we
22 look at page... Well, I do not know what page it is.
23 Second page under deforestation, point E. It says: "The
24 map is where the rainforest existed in Costa Rica." If we
25 look at the map on the next page, we see that Bosco
26 Llubvioso, which can be defined as rain or wet forest on
27 this map, is the coastal area to the south of the country
28 where, we have heard, McDonald's were receiving twenty
29 percent of their supplies from that area, from the San
30 Isidro region of that area. As McDonald's have said that
31 they were receiving supplies from areas that were
32 previously rainforest, by their own admission at least
33 until the early '60s, then unless they are saying that
34 Guanacaste area and the Nicoya Peninsula -- who they have
35 said were supplying them -- have rainforest it can only be,
36 their admission can only relate to the area defined by
37 their expert advice, the advice that Mr. Cesca had, or, in
38 fact, just by general knowledge, or whatever.
39
40 MR JUSTICE BELL: You have been mentioning the '60s.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Miss Bensilum told Mr. Rose that in Costa
45 Rica land which was rainforest in the mid '70s could have
46 been used to grow beef in the mid '80s.
47
48 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
49
50 MR JUSTICE BELL: Well, that is one thing. Mean that what it
51 will, it is the word 'could' not the word 'was'. What
52 I thought she said to Mr. Rose in positive terms -- not
53 might's or possibilities, in positive terms -- was
54 "... buying beef from its suppliers which came from farms
55 established between 1920 and 1960", which would take it up
56 to the '50s at the latest, "and from farms which had been
57 rainforest and which were deforested in the 1950s", which
58 again would be the 1950s at the latest. Not the 1960s.
59
60 Now, it may sound like a point of detail, but it may not at
