Day 158 - 19 Jul 95 - Page 51
1 I cannot read it either. Anyhow, that is, apparently, what
2 this is. There is no better indication -- this is what
3 matter for the purpose of this application -- of where are
4 the places from which McDonald's in Brazil habitually take
5 their beef.
6
7 As I said to your Lordship this morning, if one looks at
8 the Braslo map at three prices in the right-hand column
9 beside the orange blob in the legend are in the south of
10 Brazil next to the Uruguayan border, so one can forget
11 about them.
12
13 The four places that I have marked on the copy of the Times
14 map are, starting at the most northerly one underneath
15 Brazilia, a place called Goiania, and that is just outside
16 a 500 mile radius from Sao Paulo. That radius, I think, in
17 your Lordship's map is black, in the Defendants' and mine,
18 I think it is red. I have written "500 miles" or "800
19 kilometres" more or less parallel to the bottom of the
20 page. I have drawn a line. So Goiania is a mere 800 miles
21 from Sao Paulo.
22
23 The next one which is Uberlandia which is due south of
24 Goiania is even less distant from Sao Paulo than that. The
25 next one which is due south of Barretos which is called
26 Bauru is even closer to Sao Paulo. The one to the west,
27 and this is the last one, which is called Campo Grande --
28 these, I hope, are orange on your Lordship's copy -- is
29 again just outside the 800 kilometre radius from Sao
30 Paulo. It is more than, as is Goiania, 500 miles or 800
31 kilometres from the nearest little corner of rain forest
32 which is on the fold of the map.
33
34 My Lord, that being so, one has to ask the question: Could
35 any reasonable person suppose that McDonald's consumption
36 of beef taken from those areas, there being no evidence
37 about deforestation except this, that I think it is
38 Mr. Shane says that the deforestation more or less finished
39 four years before McDonald's had ever set up in Brazil,
40 1975, could any reasonable person use that information
41 which I have put before your Lordship as a basis for saying
42 that McDonald's were responsible even in the remotest way
43 for any kind of environmental damage or social damage in
44 Brazil?
45
46 It must be proposed, at the very lowest, that those areas
47 of Brazil -- this really is the very lowest -- which are
48 marked on this map are areas which were until at least very
49 recently rain forest and, second, that they are areas from
50 which the peasants have been driven by the cattle ranchers
51 in recent times, and that those peasants then emigrated the
52 500 miles or more from those areas into the rain forest
53 where they cut down the trees and drove out the Indians.
54
55 By that route, if it were a route which could be built on
56 the information available, no doubt subject to my first
57 objection to this paragraph, no doubt some kind of a
58 pleading could be got on its feet. This plea does not come
59 within a million miles of making that kind of a specific
60 case.
