Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 20
1 we have brought defence witnesses and evidence,
2 authoritative defence witnesses and evidence to court to
3 back up those criticisms, and in the light of all that, it
4 is impossible for anyone to even think that there is a
5 possibility of those criticisms being lies or that people
6 that believe them to be motivated by malice, because the
7 beliefs are completely reasonable. We will come on to
8 whether all those criticisms have been proven or not later
9 on, but the question is they are certainly reasonable and
10 have a founding in facts and public debate.
11
12 If I just look at the environment. These are just very
13 brief examples. In the public domain, we have heard that
14 Prince Phillip on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund
15 criticised McDonald's, saying that they are responsible for
16 the destruction of the Amazonian rainforests. McDonald's
17 have backed up the evidence about that incident.
18
19 We have seen in this courtroom the book Ecology 2000 that
20 Miss Steel referred to when she was in the witness box,
21 where on one page there was a picture of McDonald's golden
22 arches, below it there was a picture of rainforests and
23 underneath it says: The hamburger connection, South and
24 Central American cattle via McDonald's, the world's largest
25 seller of hamburgers to millions of mouths. In the
26 process, millions of acres of tropical forest are being
27 destroyed.
28
29 That is something which she was given, I think, well before
30 she got involved with London Greenpeace. We have seen the
31 film that was shown on Channel 4 in this country,
32 Jungleburger, a criticism of the effect of the hamburger
33 industry on Costa Rican tropical forests, where McDonald's
34 supply in that country. The sales director states on
35 camera that they are exporting beef for McDonald's in the
36 USA, a statement which he has not denied making even though
37 he has given evidence for McDonald's in this case before.
38
39 Also, it is a generally held view that the hamburger
40 industry, and McDonald's is part of it, the biggest player,
41 is responsible for destruction of rainforests. It is not
42 something that London Greenpeace invented.
43
44 Going on to whether McDonald's should have known this, that
45 this was in the public domain, and that this was certainly
46 either a fact or a contestable fact, McDonald's own letter
47 in 1982 recognised the importance of rainforest. This was
48 the letter, I think, from Chicago about Brazil - I have not
49 got it to hand, but we will come to it later - where they
50 recognised the importance of rainforest, the damage that
51 the cattle ranching industry is doing to the Amazon.
52 I think they identified 38 percent of the destruction being
53 down to cattle ranching. And also saying that they
54 recognised in that letter, we say, that exports from
55 rainforest countries would contribute to that destruction
56 and they said for that reason they have a policy of only
57 using Brazilian beef in Brazilian stores, which of course
58 has now turned out not to be the case. Only a year later
59 they were exporting to the UK from Brazil.
60
