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.
