Day 245 - 07 May 96 - Page 05
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is in dispute as to whether it was
2 formerly rainforest at least to the extent of which parts
3 ever were rainforest and if they were, when they were, so
4 you have to be much more precise than that if it is going
5 to be a useful question.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: One example is we have had evidence from David
8 Rose, which was unchallenged, a journalist from The
9 Observer, who was told by Edi Bensilum that in Costa Rica
10 McDonald's were using suppliers from land that was
11 previously rainforest cleared in the 1950s up to the early
12 1960s.
13
14 Your company have stated, and you have sued people and
15 written in legal letters, for example to the BBC on 1st May
16 1984:
17
18 "Neither the U.S. nor the Canadian companies nor any other
19 McDonald's companies has used, or does use, meat which
20 comes from cattle reared in former rainforest areas", and
21 there are a number of ones I will not quote, but similarly
22 you wrote to the Worldwide Life Fund similarly on 22nd
23 February 1983, to Veggies, an Educational Organisation in
24 Nottingham on 8th October 1987, an almost identical thing
25 in the legal letter, and they were being sued over the
26 London Greenpeace fact sheet, which incidentally they are
27 still circulating, and you have been in charge of deciding
28 who to sue in this country over the last 10 years?
29 A. I am the Chief Executive of McDonald's in this country
30 as far as that goes, yes.
31
32 Q. Do you accept those statements are not true?
33 A. I do not accept that. I accept that McDonald's has not
34 used beef totally consistently with our rainforest
35 statement. From the time we enter a country to think about
36 setting up operations there, we do not use beef from
37 rainforest land or former rainforest land.
38
39 Q. That is not what the policy statement says. Do you know
40 what the rainforest policy statement says?
41 A. It says, just as I stated, from the time we begin
42 looking at a country for operations, often times taking 12,
43 14, 18, 36 months to get started, we do not use beef from
44 rainforest land.
45
46 Q. Right. But if it had been previously cleared before you
47 started in the country then that would be OK to be used.
48 It is from the moment you start going into the country that
49 is when ----
50 A. No, from the moment we begin exploring business
51 opportunities.
52
53 Q. So the statement that you have never used any ex-rainforest
54 land is not true, is it?
55 A. It is a true statement.
56
57 Q. You say it is true but you do not know whether it is true
58 or not basically?
59 A. McDonald's has a group of people who for years have
60 consistently monitored our every activity as to purchasing
