Day 285 - 23 Oct 96 - Page 37
1 being told that -- what is the phrase now? -- an inspector
2 had inspected beef for McDonald's use, that this come from
3 outside of the USA -- I think it was something like
4 Australia, New Zealand -- not much from anywhere else.
5 That was as part of a research that he was doing
6 commissioned for -- (Pause) -- for the US Department of
7 State. I think that we would say that would be admissible
8 hearsay because of his position as a researcher charged
9 with doing research on behalf of a statutory body. We
10 have, obviously, a whole statistical inevitability
11 argument which I would not go into now, it is well
12 documented throughout our witnesses.
13
14 So, on this subject of the US labelling, the conclusion is
15 that any claimed policy relies on suppliers, and trusts
16 suppliers. The policies are uncertain with uncertain
17 definitions, certainly up to 1989, so can suppliers be
18 expected to apply them? There is economic pressures on
19 suppliers to keep price down, which is common sense, but
20 also part of the cheap beef case, suppliers -- we would
21 say we have shown -- have been known to mislead
22 McDonald's, so trust is not justified. There is no
23 guarantee that suppliers will comply with policies, the
24 policies rely on US legislation which, is at the best,
25 unclear and that the US labelling system in the States
26 ensures that it is inevitable that imported beef is lost
27 into the domestic supply and any beef bought on the market
28 on any kind of scale is bound to include some imported
29 beef.
30
31 We heard from Howard Lyman that from his experience as a
32 cattle rancher and also someone who worked on behalf of
33 cattle ranchers investigating process plants and, as a
34 representative, that basically when there is a need for
35 beef and a need for cheap beef, then anything goes in
36 order to satisfy that demand. I mean, yes, I think I kind
37 of remember now, I think that Howard Lyman had even
38 investigated a plant that supplied McDonald's.
39
40 I have nearly finished the whole policy point. To
41 conclude about whether we could, anyone could, trust
42 McDonald's to have an effective policy, we have seen how,
43 and we will see, I am sure, it is difficult to demonstrate
44 McDonald's have been using ex-rainforest and ex-tropical
45 forest land, and suppliers have stated that they have
46 exported to McDonald's in the US -- well, Co-op
47 Montecillos in particular have not denied in their
48 statement, exported for McDonald's. Their avoidance of
49 the US labelling inadequacies, refusal to negotiate or
50 work with Friends of The Earth, failure to have any
51 independent inspection of their supply chain, and for all
52 the other obvious reasons such as basically they want to
53 get cheap beef in large amounts in order to keep up their
54 profits, then we say that the overall thrust of their
55 existence as an organisation is to sell as much beef as
56 possible, to buy it as cheaply as possible and make as
57 much profit as possible, then basically, any policies,
58 unless they are completely convincing, are bound to be
59 sheer window dressing, and I hope we have demonstrated
60 today that they are completely unconvincing, and we will
