Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 21
1 Also we have now heard regarding Brazil from Morganti, the
2 director of the hamburger factory supplying McDonald's,
3 that when we finally got the supply sources, which he says
4 supplied McDonald's beef, that some of those supply sources
5 are based on what we have heard is ex rainforest land in
6 the State of Gioias. And regarding Costa Rica, he had Edie
7 Bensilum's statement that said how they were using ex
8 rainforest land in Costa Rica, deforested as late as ten
9 years before they started operations in Costa Rica, within
10 ten years, and also that the majority of the beef supplied
11 came from ranches established I think in the fifties and
12 sixties. I can't remember now exact details. So on three
13 of the major planks, Costa Rica, Brazil and exports,
14 McDonald's have made admissions.
15
16 And just to say something very briefly to -- again, we are
17 dealing with this, that we should have, you know, thrown in
18 the towel as soon as we saw McDonald's witness statements,
19 that we obviously knew it was all wrong, that we have
20 brought substantial authoritative and experienced witnesses
21 on this issue, the director of Friends of the Earth UK,
22 Charles Secret, and other professors and experts on the
23 Amazon and on Latin American tropical forests and they have
24 backed up our case.
25
26 If I can move on to packaging. Again, the criticisms of
27 McDonald's have been in the public domain. We have heard
28 how there was a big campaign against their use of CFC's in
29 America in the mid to late 1980s. And criticism of CFC's
30 usage, certain aerosols, goes back to the late seventies,
31 as far as we have heard in this courtroom.
32
33 As regards environment/index.html">litter, it is just basically common sense.
34 People can see with their own eyes. And the wastefulness
35 of packaging that has a shelf life -- not a shelf life, has
36 a use life of five minutes, in some cases only thirty
37 seconds, as people discard all kind of the paraphernalia
38 that comes with the food. It is generally considered to be
39 wasteful and obviously McDonald's, again through the
40 admissions of their own representatives and very
41 interestingly of Mr. Ashworth or Professor Ashworth of the
42 Tidy Britain group, who in the witness box conceded that it
43 was a losing battle against environment/index.html">litter and that McDonald's was
44 in the top one or two percent if identifiable environment/index.html">litter in the
45 streets, top one or two percent companies causing the
46 environment/index.html">litter or where the environment/index.html">litter emanates from.
47
48 And the other witnesses from McDonald's all accept that
49 packaging, the sheer volume of it and the contents of it,
50 is damaging to the environment. That is why they say they
51 are trying to look at change, reduce the volume and content
52 of their packaging, precisely because they accept our case
53 that it is a bad thing and that of course any responsible
54 organisation would try to reduce, re-use and re-cycle
55 plastic and paper packaging.
56
57 Of course, we have also brought our own witnesses including
58 Ann Link, who is trying to get a bill through Parliament to
59 enforce waste prevention procedures on a local level
60 throughout the country, through local councils, I believe.
