Day 073 - 13 Jan 95 - Page 21
1 balance of probabilities McDonald's paper or paperboard
2 packaging, or some of it, comes from pulp, from timber from
3 Scottish forests, you have Mr. Hopkins saying at 6.10.2
4 that has an adverse effect on the environment. The same
5 reasoning could apply to 7.4.2 to which I referred a few
6 minutes ago at the bottom of page 28, USA: "Paper sourced
7 from the USA is thus damaging to the environment". 8.10.1
8 Sweden; 9.6.2 Finland; 10.2 Czechoslovakia and 11.3.2
9 Canada.
10
11 In so far as at the end of the day it appears on balance of
12 probabilities that McDonald's use paper products sourced
13 from any of those countries, on the face of those very
14 general statements, you could infer that McDonald's have a
15 responsibility for damaging the environment when we are
16 looking at forests.
17
18 So, for instance, in my view, it might be useful (and
19 really I embarked on it a few minutes ago) to look at
20 whether Mr. Hopkins is actually saying damage to the
21 environment in the sense that "a cultivated and tended
22 forest cannot contain all the biological qualities and
23 variations that are to be found in the natural forest".
24 See the Skogsindustrierna press release of October 1992, to
25 which you have referred, or in some more extensive way,
26 because he said "any paper products", which, on the face of
27 it, would mean that if I bought one book which had leaves
28 in it which had once been part of a tree somewhere in
29 Canada, I would have a responsibility for damaging the
30 environment.
31
32 I have taken that as an extreme example in the hope that --
33 do you see?
34
35 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I think Mr. Hopkins -----
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is that it, or is there much more to it than
38 that? That is what I need to know.
39
40 MR. MORRIS: I think Mr. Hopkins has dealt with it. He has put
41 the case for plantation forests. Mr. Rampton made a great
42 long speech about me going line by line through the paper,
43 the statement, which I have not even quoted one line of it
44 yet; I did not intend to do that. In fact, I think
45 Mr. Hopkins in his statement and in the things he has
46 already said has dealt with the case against plantation
47 forests and also the management of those forests certainly
48 up to, he indicated 1990, for example, in this country.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Fair enough; as long as you appreciate what
51 I am looking at.
52
53 MR. MORRIS: I think he has dealt with the old growth issue or
54 semi-natural or ancient woodland or natural forests,
55 whatever, that that was the No. 1 environmental priority to
56 protect those. So where logging is going on in those
57 forests, that is clearly, he has stated, something to be
58 avoided like the plague. So, I felt we had dealt with the
59 general picture. It was only really, I was going to look
60 at some specific references to look at maybe particular
