Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 31


     
     1        exported beef.
     2
     3        Now, this is a good point on the global demand for exported
     4        beef.  A different point, but one I have just thought of,
     5        it is a recognition that it is the demand for beef
     6        exports.  Basically, it is a demand for beef throughout the
     7        world which is the major cause of deforestation and
     8        destruction in the Amazon.  But the point being, as I say,
     9        that they do not make any distinction, she does not make
    10        any distinction, between rainforests and Amazonian forest.
    11        Nothing like, well, we are not bothered about, you know,
    12        the 40 percent of the Amazon that is not strictly, you
    13        know, pre-montain humid non-seasonal super-moist forest
    14        with a rainfall above XYZ, which is a sort of construction
    15        that McDonald's have tried to bring into this case without
    16        any --
    17
    18   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Her letter cannot help me on what the meaning
    19        of rainforest is in the leaflet, can it?
    20
    21   MR. MORRIS:   Anything that is an admission by the plaintiffs
    22        about what -- I am arguing now for what I think the meaning
    23        of the leaflet is.
    24
    25   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:   And I should be able to pray in aid anything
    28        conceded about the plaintiffs in any form.
    29
    30   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There is no concession in her letter about
    31        what rainforest meant in the leaflet.  It was written four
    32        years before the leaflet was.
    33
    34   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, but what I am saying is that the artificial
    35        construction that McDonald's have attempted to put on the
    36        word rainforest in this case is not the natural meaning
    37        which they have used in the past, for example in this
    38        letter where they make no distinction between Amazonian
    39        forest and rainforest.  That is the point I am making.
    40        Obviously, we say rainforest goes beyond Amazonia as well,
    41        but certainly cannot be restricted in the way that the
    42        plaintiffs have restricted it.
    43
    44        And just to go a little bit off the point, just while
    45        I have this in front of me, if I can just refer to it, on
    46        page 54 Mr. Rampton says:  "There is no room for any
    47        suggestion that McDonald's, in the United States or
    48        anywhere else in the world, uses or has ever used beef
    49        imported from rainforest countries."  That is not true.
    50 
    51        Then he says, a revealing point about policy, ever since 
    52        awareness of the importance of the world's rainforest 
    53        became general, McDonald's has had a positive policy that
    54        no beef from any recently deforested rainforest in the
    55        world should find its way into their product.  There is an
    56        argument whether that may or may not have existed in some
    57        kind of undefined way before.  It is a recognition that
    58        McDonald's were forced into a policy due to public
    59        criticism, in general.  We would say of them in
    60        particular.

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