Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 26


     
     1        McDonald's.  At that time McDonald's had 175 suppliers.
     2
     3        This is really the environment section, although it does
     4        relate to the artificial farming methods used.  On his own
     5        farm, he said that: "With the chemicals we had used, we had
     6        eliminated most of the birds in drifts; from the herbicides
     7        we were using, killed most of the trees, the tilth of the
     8        soil had changed from a living soil to soil that appeared
     9        like asbestos."
    10
    11        He said that those practices were unusual prior to the
    12        1960s but they became more and more usual as we went along,
    13        and they were the standard of the industry and they are the
    14        standard of the industry today.  That was on page 4.
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Which day is this?
    17
    18   MS. STEEL:   This is day 233.
    19
    20   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    21
    22   MS. STEEL:   On page 16, giving evidence about pollution, there
    23        is actually a word wrong in the transcript.  It should be
    24        "factory farm" and it says "factory fit".  That is on page
    25        16, line 39. He said:  "The thing that happens in the
    26        factory farm operations today is that there is so much
    27        contamination from faeces and run-off that it is almost
    28        impossible to contain it in the lot.  It does run off; and
    29        in the US today, the government will admit that the number
    30        one contaminant of our water today is coming from
    31        agriculture.  It is the pressure that is put on farmers.
    32        The only control they have is, basically, to do more
    33        production.  They do not control their market; they do not
    34        control what they are paying for the product; and so the
    35        only thing they can do is to produce more units.  That is
    36        providing a tremendous problem as far as the environment
    37        and our water system."  And he said that it basically makes
    38        the water non-usable by humans.
    39
    40        We heard other witnesses refer to the environmental effects
    41        of modern farming methods, including Dr. Pattison and Dr.
    42        Long.  He referred on page 9 of the transcript to the use
    43        of pesticides and said:  "We used herbicides and pesticides
    44        on all of the crops that we used for feed for our
    45        livestock."  He said at the bottom of page 8 -- I am sorry,
    46        I did this in the wrong order -- that at the time when the
    47        farm was in operation they were buying hundreds of
    48        thousands of dollars' worth of herbicides, pesticides,
    49        hormones and medication.  The herbicides that we were
    50        buying were ones that were used on the crops such as 24D, 
    51        25D, Emrin, and he gave other examples, and he said:  "Many 
    52        of those have now been banned.  At that time, they were 
    53        approved.  So far as the pesticides we were using, we were
    54        using things like Lindane, which today have also been
    55        banned for use."
    56
    57        I mean, some of this is relevant to the environment
    58        section, but it is also relevant to the part about the
    59        pesticides and hormones in the food as well.  I am just
    60        dealing with it because obviously, having read through

Prev Next Index