Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 49


     
     1        been widely accepted as having some kind of basis in
              fact.
     2
              My Lord, as I sit down I propose to show your Lordship a
     3        short video film that was made by a school in St. John's
              Wood with the cooperation of the local McDonald's
     4        restaurant; in order that your Lordship may see two things
              really.  First, how this rainforest myth has become so
     5        persistent; second, how it is that the defendants'
              poisonous leaflet has done its work, because your Lordship
     6        will find embedded in the course of that film made by
              school children a photograph on the front of the leaflet.
     7        I will show that, if I may, at the end of this opening.
 
     8        My Lord, the defendants' allegations about rainforests,
              whether the ones made in the leaflet which I read out this
     9        morning, or whether what I might call the very much more
              pallid allegations they now make in the defence, all of
    10        those allegations are from start to finish completely
              false.
    11
              The leaflet alleges, your Lordship will remember, that the
    12        plaintiffs' own vast tracks of land in poor countries from
              which they have evicted the small farmers in order to grow
    13        cattle for their hamburgers.  The leaflet says that in
              order to make way for their cattle ranches and to provide
    14        paper for their packaging, the plaintiffs have destroyed
              and are continuing to destroy by the use of lethal poisons
    15        vast areas of rainforests in central America, thereby
              forcing the tribal peoples of those countries off their
    16        ancestral their territory.
 
    17        The leaflet says that the plaintiffs also have an indirect
              responsibility for the destruction of rainforests and for
    18        the creation hunger and poverty of Third World countries
              because they encourage the people of those countries to
    19        use the land to grow the grain for cattle which the
              plaintiffs then import to the USA to make into
    20        hamburgers.
 
    21        My Lord, the facts are these: As I have told your
              Lordship, apart from restaurants and offices, the
    22        plaintiffs do not own, and have never owned -- it may be
              that they own the odd cricket pitch or football field,
    23        I know not, but apart from that, they do not own and have
              never owned any land of any kind in any country of the
    24        world.
 
    25        In consequence, they are not and never have been in a
              position to destroy a single rainforest tree directly, 
    26        even if one were to make the wholly bizarre assumption 
              that they should wish to do so. 
    27
              Second, in general, the beef used in the plaintiffs'
    28        restaurants throughout the world is raised and slaughtered
              in the countries in which those restaurants are situated.
    29        Thus, in the United States the beef is (and always has
              been) 100 per cent US beef.
    30
              In this country the beef is all raised here or, to some

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