Day 067 - 15 Dec 94 - Page 56
1
2 Q. What would you call pre-pattie meat?
3 A. Raw materials.
4
5 Q. But the chicken you do? On that page it says chicken?
6 A. Can you refer me to the ----
7
8 Q. It is J again.
9 A. OK.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is Cargill.
12 A. It is Cargill. They export product. They have a big
13 facility in Argentina of which we are a small part. That
14 facility itself exports, but none of their products are
15 exported from Argentina or other McDonald's companies
16 around the world, all our suppliers.
17
18 MR. MORRIS: The other countries, Brazil and Costa Rica, you
19 said about monitoring of farms?
20 A. Yes.
21
22 Q. Can you give us a sort of time-scale and whether it is up
23 to 100 per cent or 80 per cent?
24 A. Oh, yes.
25
26 Q. What is the kind of picture?
27 A. Both of them is 100 per cent. Again, I can give you
28 the example of Costa Rica. Our supplier has his own
29 cattle. It also has its own slaughter facilities. It also
30 has its own processing plant, so both he slaughterhouse as
31 well as the processing facilities are located in the same
32 place, and because it own its own cattle we know where the
33 meat is coming from, we know where the animals are coming
34 from, so we have the capability of tracing back to the
35 farm.
36
37 Q. How long has that been done?
38 A. We have since I am aware of. Ray Cesca has all the
39 information and he can provide you with all the details.
40
41 Q. In those plants, say, in Costa Rica, do they only use beef
42 that they own or do they also take in beef from other herds
43 as well?
44 A. For our own purposes ----
45
46 Q. Yes, for McDonald's.
47 A. --- it is only beef that, as far as I know, they own.
48 I might add it is a large company, so they have plenty of
49 beef they have for other uses. In fact, they have been
50 trying to increase in potential export to other countries
51 within McDonald's for a number of years, so they do have
52 extra cattle. There is no need for them to go outside and
53 buy more cattle for our purposes.
54
55 Q. So which countries do they export to?
56 A. For McDonald's, none.
57
58 Q. But they are trying to increase that?
59 A. They have been. We have been asked, I have been asked
60 several times that we want to go into other countries, but
