Day 286 - 24 Oct 96 - Page 25


     
     1   MR. MORRIS:   Right.  Now, I think these are very significant
     2        documents because they have been prepared for McDonald's by
     3        an expert upon which McDonald's are basing any knowledge
     4        that they do have.
     5
     6   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Who is the expert?
     7
     8   MR. MORRIS:   I do not know actually.  I think they were
     9        prepared by -- I can't remember Mr. Cesca's evidence on
    10        this.  Something about -- is it the local embassy for him?
    11        I got the impression...  That will have to be checked,
    12        I think, exactly who prepared them.  But he had asked for
    13        expert advice and this was the advice he got, upon which,
    14        presumably, he based his opinions on the subject.
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Right.  Let us assume all that is fair
    17        enough.  You point out the things which you particularly --
    18        I have made some underlinings, but I want to know what you
    19        particularly say.
    20
    21   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.  Well, if we go through it in turn, if we
    22        look at page...  Well, I do not know what page it is.
    23        Second page under deforestation, point E.  It says: "The
    24        map is where the rainforest existed in Costa Rica."  If we
    25        look at the map on the next page, we see that Bosco
    26        Llubvioso, which can be defined as rain or wet forest on
    27        this map, is the coastal area to the south of the country
    28        where, we have heard, McDonald's were receiving twenty
    29        percent of their supplies from that area, from the San
    30        Isidro region of that area.  As McDonald's have said that
    31        they were receiving supplies from areas that were
    32        previously rainforest, by their own admission at least
    33        until the early '60s, then unless they are saying that
    34        Guanacaste area and the Nicoya Peninsula -- who they have
    35        said were supplying them -- have rainforest it can only be,
    36        their admission can only relate to the area defined by
    37        their expert advice, the advice that Mr. Cesca had, or, in
    38        fact, just by general knowledge, or whatever.
    39
    40   MR JUSTICE BELL:  You have been mentioning the '60s.
    41
    42   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.
    43
    44   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Miss Bensilum told Mr. Rose that in Costa
    45        Rica land which was rainforest in the mid '70s could have
    46        been used to grow beef in the mid '80s.
    47
    48   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.
    49
    50   MR JUSTICE BELL:   Well, that is one thing.  Mean that what it 
    51        will, it is the word 'could' not the word 'was'.  What 
    52        I thought she said to Mr. Rose in positive terms -- not 
    53        might's or possibilities, in positive terms -- was
    54        "... buying beef from its suppliers which came from farms
    55        established between 1920 and 1960", which would take it up
    56        to the '50s at the latest, "and from farms which had been
    57        rainforest and which were deforested in the 1950s", which
    58        again would be the 1950s at the latest.  Not the 1960s.
    59
    60        Now, it may sound like a point of detail, but it may not at

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