Day 240 - 24 Apr 96 - Page 14
1 Head Office in London, and subsequently corresponded
2 briefly with Annette Allen, the then Public Relations
3 Manager of McDonald's in the UK about,
4
5 4.1 deforestation and cattle ranching on tropical forest
6 land in Latin America, and Central America in particular;
7
8 4.2 the export of beef from these areas for consumption in
9 the fast-food sector of the United States, including the
10 likely use by McDonald's US of such meat supplies;
11
12 4.3 McDonald's categoric and repeated public claims that,
13 in the United States and elsewhere, they have never used
14 beef originating from any South American or Central
15 American country in any of their products, or used beef
16 supplies anywhere in the world threatened tropical
17 rainforests.
18
19 4.4 Opportunities to work co-operatively to clear up, to
20 the mutual advantage of environmentalists and the fast-food
21 sector in the United States, persistent and
22 institutionalised confusion over the certification process,
23 and thus countries of origin of the cattle carcasses, for
24 beef imports into the United States.".
25
26 We will come to the letters regarding that later on.
27 A. OK.
28
29 Q. "5. I have attached copies of relevant correspondence,
30 including copies of correspondence from McDonald's to two
31 Friends of the Earth supporters, dated respectively 7 May
32 and 11 December 1986, which FOE has on its files, and a
33 copy of an internal memo from Annette Allen (11 November
34 1985) summarising her version of the discussion which we
35 had at our earlier meeting.
36
37 6. I would like to make the following points in relation to
38 the issues summarised under point 4):
39
40 6.1) During the 1980s, Friends of the Earth was extremely
41 concerned that McDonald's in the UK and in other countries
42 were, either inadvertently or deliberately, making
43 misleading claims in public about the origin of the beef
44 used in their United States restaurants by stating
45 categorically that 'McDonald's USA... has never purchased
46 imported beef from Central America or South America for use
47 in their hamburgers' (cf. letter to me from Annette Allen,
48 20 November 1985), and 'McDonald's does not use any South
49 American or Central American beef for hamburgers sold in
50 the United States' and 'nowhere in the entire world does
51 McDonald's use of beef threaten or remotely involve
52 tropical rainforests' (cf. sample letters 7 May 11
53 December, 1986)."
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think we have got to do a bit of summary
56 here. You go on to state your reasons for believing that
57 those assertions are false and cannot be true for the
58 period in question, that is up until the end of 1986, and
59 stating that reason you say -- would you like to read on
60 from "because of" Mr. Morris?