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.

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