Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 49
1 been widely accepted as having some kind of basis in
fact.
2
My Lord, as I sit down I propose to show your Lordship a
3 short video film that was made by a school in St. John's
Wood with the cooperation of the local McDonald's
4 restaurant; in order that your Lordship may see two things
really. First, how this rainforest myth has become so
5 persistent; second, how it is that the defendants'
poisonous leaflet has done its work, because your Lordship
6 will find embedded in the course of that film made by
school children a photograph on the front of the leaflet.
7 I will show that, if I may, at the end of this opening.
8 My Lord, the defendants' allegations about rainforests,
whether the ones made in the leaflet which I read out this
9 morning, or whether what I might call the very much more
pallid allegations they now make in the defence, all of
10 those allegations are from start to finish completely
false.
11
The leaflet alleges, your Lordship will remember, that the
12 plaintiffs' own vast tracks of land in poor countries from
which they have evicted the small farmers in order to grow
13 cattle for their hamburgers. The leaflet says that in
order to make way for their cattle ranches and to provide
14 paper for their packaging, the plaintiffs have destroyed
and are continuing to destroy by the use of lethal poisons
15 vast areas of rainforests in central America, thereby
forcing the tribal peoples of those countries off their
16 ancestral their territory.
17 The leaflet says that the plaintiffs also have an indirect
responsibility for the destruction of rainforests and for
18 the creation hunger and poverty of Third World countries
because they encourage the people of those countries to
19 use the land to grow the grain for cattle which the
plaintiffs then import to the USA to make into
20 hamburgers.
21 My Lord, the facts are these: As I have told your
Lordship, apart from restaurants and offices, the
22 plaintiffs do not own, and have never owned -- it may be
that they own the odd cricket pitch or football field,
23 I know not, but apart from that, they do not own and have
never owned any land of any kind in any country of the
24 world.
25 In consequence, they are not and never have been in a
position to destroy a single rainforest tree directly,
26 even if one were to make the wholly bizarre assumption
that they should wish to do so.
27
Second, in general, the beef used in the plaintiffs'
28 restaurants throughout the world is raised and slaughtered
in the countries in which those restaurants are situated.
29 Thus, in the United States the beef is (and always has
been) 100 per cent US beef.
30
In this country the beef is all raised here or, to some
