Day 285 - 23 Oct 96 - Page 37


     
     1        being told that -- what is the phrase now? -- an inspector
     2        had inspected beef for McDonald's use, that this come from
     3        outside of the USA -- I think it was something like
     4        Australia, New Zealand -- not much from anywhere else.
     5        That was as part of a research that he was doing
     6        commissioned for -- (Pause) -- for the US Department of
     7        State.  I think that we would say that would be admissible
     8        hearsay because of his position as a researcher charged
     9        with doing research on behalf of a statutory body.  We
    10        have, obviously, a whole statistical inevitability
    11        argument which I would not go into now, it is well
    12        documented throughout our witnesses.
    13
    14        So, on this subject of the US labelling, the conclusion is
    15        that any claimed policy relies on suppliers, and trusts
    16        suppliers.  The policies are uncertain with uncertain
    17        definitions, certainly up to 1989, so can suppliers be
    18        expected to apply them?   There is economic pressures on
    19        suppliers to keep price down, which is common sense, but
    20        also part of the cheap beef case, suppliers -- we would
    21        say we have shown -- have been known to mislead
    22        McDonald's, so trust is not justified.  There is no
    23        guarantee that suppliers will comply with policies, the
    24        policies rely on US legislation which, is at the best,
    25        unclear and that the US labelling system in the States
    26        ensures that it is inevitable that imported beef is lost
    27        into the domestic supply and any beef bought on the market
    28        on any kind of scale is bound to include some imported
    29        beef.
    30
    31        We heard from Howard Lyman that from his experience as a
    32        cattle rancher and also someone who worked on behalf of
    33        cattle ranchers investigating process plants and, as a
    34        representative, that basically when there is a need for
    35        beef and a need for cheap beef, then anything goes in
    36        order to satisfy that demand.  I mean, yes, I think I kind
    37        of remember now, I think that Howard Lyman had even
    38        investigated a plant that supplied McDonald's.
    39
    40        I have nearly finished the whole policy point.  To
    41        conclude about whether we could, anyone could, trust
    42        McDonald's to have an effective policy, we have seen how,
    43        and we will see, I am sure, it is difficult to demonstrate
    44        McDonald's have been using ex-rainforest and ex-tropical
    45        forest land, and suppliers have stated that they have
    46        exported to McDonald's in the US -- well, Co-op
    47        Montecillos in particular have not denied in their
    48        statement, exported for McDonald's.  Their avoidance of
    49        the US labelling inadequacies, refusal to negotiate or
    50        work with Friends of The Earth, failure to have any
    51        independent inspection of their supply chain, and for all
    52        the other obvious reasons such as basically they want to 
    53        get cheap beef in large amounts in order to keep up their
    54        profits, then we say that the overall thrust of their
    55        existence as an organisation is to sell as much beef as
    56        possible, to buy it as cheaply as possible and make as
    57        much profit as possible, then basically, any policies,
    58        unless they are completely convincing, are bound to be
    59        sheer window dressing, and I hope we have demonstrated
    60        today that they are completely unconvincing, and we will

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