Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 13


     
     1        this demand and supply chain, but not in great detail,
     2        including the necessity of having to feed animals that are
     3        used in the food industry and generally what you might call
     4        the cash crop economy, where the sting of meaning of the
     5        cash crop economy is that cash crops are replacing
     6        self-sufficient farming and farming for local people's
     7        needs.  That is where the home comes in, that instead of
     8        people being able to grow food for themselves or for their
     9        region, cash crops are instead creating raw material for
    10        large companies.  This obviously also, this process, would
    11        continue over on to the rainforest page.
    12
    13        Having set the scene in the page before can I just go on to
    14        say something about the supply chain?  McDonald's
    15        responsibility as the main incentive and the most powerful
    16        component of the supply chain means that they are
    17        necessarily responsible for what happens lower down in the
    18        chain.  So, for example, under 'hungry for dollars'
    19        McDonald's is one of several giant corporations with
    20        investments in vast tracks of land.  What investment does
    21        McDonald's have and what is sold to them, obviously, in our
    22        opinion, must be the beef and the cattle because that is
    23        what their business is about, and that is, what anybody who
    24        knows what McDonald's business is about, needing a supply
    25        of cattle and beef.
    26
    27        The fact that the cattle are sold to a slaughter house
    28        before being sold to a hamburger factory, before being sold
    29        to McDonald's is, we would say, immaterial as regards
    30        McDonald's responsibility for that supply chain, and in
    31        fact, we would argue -- and I am sort of bringing in
    32        thoughts that relate to these matters as I am going through
    33        -- that McDonald's have accepted that responsibility by
    34        claiming to have a policy where they accept that they
    35        control their supply chain.  But they proudly trumpet that
    36        round the world in their corporate rainforest policy which
    37        they formulated, we say, in 1989, four years after this
    38        fact sheet was written.
    39
    40        So if I can just mention one other thing that crops up
    41        about the supply chain.  If you remember, very near the end
    42        of the rainforest evidence -- I can't remember what the
    43        reference was for it, but it was an advert about potatoes
    44        which I held up.  I do not know if you remember.  Do you
    45        remember that?   Do you remember the advert for potatoes
    46        which said, you know, 'We do this, we do that, we do the
    47        other.  We plant the potatoes, we wash them' -- you know --
    48        'We cut them up, we sell them to you.'  We would say that
    49        is also McDonald's publicly and proudly saying they have
    50        control over not only their beef supplies, as we have heard 
    51        from other areas, but they say they have control over their 
    52        other raw materials, and so we would say that they have 
    53        accepted responsibility and, in fact, where things go in
    54        their favour they proudly wish to take credit for the
    55        responsibility.
    56
    57        For example, they have claimed that the forests used for
    58        their paper packaging are sustainably managed.  They have
    59        not said, 'We do not give a monkey's, it is nothing to do
    60        with us', they have taken that as some kind of credit.  In

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