Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 42
1 confused about a number of things. But I just urge you to
2 read that, and that whole two or three pages, when he
3 basically tries to discredit their own sales director of
4 Co-op Montecillos, and it struck me that that is actually
5 quite true what he said there, remarkably true. A very
6 surprising admission, we say, that what he says there is
7 that suppliers of things will tell you anything for
8 commercial benefit. And because he says they thought Peter
9 -- how he knows, I don't know, it is all hearsay anyway.
10 But in terms of an experienced person working with
11 suppliers, for him to say that suppliers will tell you
12 anything for commercial benefit to get your contract, or
13 whatever, and that that is what the situation was, that
14 McDonald's suppliers in Costa Rica thought that Peter
15 Hillier was a potential customer or working for the German
16 beef industry and therefore they were prepared,
17 Mr. Gonzales says, to lie to him to get a contract is no
18 evidence at all against Mr. Hillier. But it is evidence
19 that even McDonald's marketing -- I can't remember what his
20 exact position was, very high up, I think he was the global
21 beef manager or something -- basically does not trust
22 suppliers not to lie for commercial advantage, and that is
23 exactly what we say strikes true for anybody who knows how
24 the kind of society we live in works, that there is a lot
25 of covering up and exaggeration and losing information and
26 deceptiveness going on, as long as it does not come out
27 that is all fine.
28
29 The point I am making goes to hearsay. The point I am
30 making, the sting of the point I am making, is that
31 McDonald's have brought in executives and heads of
32 department who cannot possibly know what really goes on
33 beyond their experience. They are not allowed to tell the
34 court so far as I understand, it is not admissible to give
35 hearsay from the witness box, and that, in any event, it
36 cannot possibly be relied upon because even they admit that
37 you cannot trust suppliers. That is what Mr. Gonzales, we
38 believe, is saying there. You cannot trust them when
39 commercial considerations are paramount.
40
41 All the statements, for example, from McDonald's suppliers
42 or McDonald's suppliers' suppliers, and in some cases
43 I think it is even further removed than that, say about not
44 using any beef in the USA that has emanated from outside
45 the country, apart from the fact they are completely
46 hearsay, double or triple hearsay, in themselves. The
47 people making those statements as officials of those
48 companies would have to be relying upon further hearsay,
49 there is no indication where they got their facts from, how
50 they tested them or anything. In fact, they were just
51 filling in standard forms which had been provided to them
52 with the gun at their head that if they did not fill them
53 in they would lose their supply -- they would lose their
54 contract, sorry.
55
56 I can just imagine the conversations that went on when they
57 got those letters, probably for the first time. It is
58 pretty obvious to us it was the first time they got those
59 kind of letters about that subject, "Oh my God, what are we
60 going to do about this, just keep your head down, otherwise
