Day 158 - 19 Jul 95 - Page 53
1 suppose I am against him on that.
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: I was not going to address your Lordship on that.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There is really no evidence that Amazon
6 frontier means that everything over the red line was
7 rain forest, that I am not very impressed with a Collins'
8 Atlas where I just do not know the basis for it at all.
9 But what he is saying is it does not matter if you are some
10 way away from the rain forest, if you are feeding beef in
11 the country, it has this knock on down the line effect viz.
12 Mr. Monbiot. At the end of the day, I may or may not think
13 much of that but is it not at least arguable?
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: It is arguable in the sense that it is an
16 interesting general proposition but, my Lord, this is
17 supposed to be a defence to an action by McDonald's; it is
18 not supposed to be a seminar in environmental studies.
19 I do notice, for all their claims to be environmentalists,
20 how remarkably ignorant the Defendants seem to be about
21 this subject, but there it is.
22
23 MR. MORRIS: I object strongly to that ---
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord -----
26
27 MR. MORRIS: -- the Bar Council prohibits insulting remarks from
28 members of the Bar against other parties.
29
30 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, quite right, I withdraw it and apologise. My
31 Lord, that being so, yes, of course, it is an interesting
32 topic of conversation, but one has to look at what the
33 actual material is which is available to refine that
34 interesting general discussion into a case against
35 McDonald's. For that purpose, one puts, as I have
36 submitted, Vesty on one side, because it proves nothing
37 since it is one incident and a small quantity 13 years ago
38 or 12 years ago, and one looks at the Braslo information
39 which, if anywhere, is to be found a suggestion that
40 McDonald's consumption of beef in Brazil might be damaging
41 the environment.
42
43 One then looks at this map and one sees where the Braslo
44 plants are. I simply cannot accept that a reasonable
45 person could sensibly believe that the 50 or so restaurants
46 which McDonald's have in Brazil, not all of whom get their
47 meat from these four plants, since there are at least three
48 others in the south and we do not even know that Braslo is
49 McDonald's sole supplier, so far as I know, in Brazil, a
50 proportion of McDonald's restaurants takes its meat from
51 these four plants.
52
53 The question is, and your Lordship may say it goes to
54 weight, of course, in one sense it does, really, is it
55 reasonable to attach any weight to it at all? How
56 reasonable is it to believe that the meat consumption of
57 those four plants, the nearest of which is 500 miles or
58 more away from the rain forest, could actually have any
59 real impact either on the social life or the environment in
60 Brazil?
