Day 068 - 16 Dec 94 - Page 07
1 MR. MORRIS: I will let you speak and you let me interrupt you
2 if I think it is something especially important .
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord, Mr. Morris will have to leave that to
5 me and your Lordship, of course.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: In that case -----
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have to say that I think that what
10 Mr. Morris said then was completely inoffensive. He did
11 not mean to interrupt you. Let us go back to what you were
12 saying, Mr. Gomez.
13
14 THE WITNESS: The zones, which I was trying to elaborate on, we
15 have, the Corporation has established basically, so that we
16 can manage it better, zones in which we operate. We have
17 the North American zone; we have the European zone; we have
18 the Asia zone; we have the Latin American zone.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: That is all the zones, is it?
21 A. We have the Middle East zone.
22
23 Q. That is all, yes?
24 A. That is correct. Within those zones, we are a very
25 decentralised organisation. They are directly responsible
26 for what happens in that zone. We have centres of
27 operations and quality assurance centres that represent
28 those zones. We have -- in Germany, for example, that
29 represents Europe. We have Hong Kong, that will represent
30 Asia. When we want to export or move product around,
31 McDonald's does that exporting or importing approval and
32 process and looks at all the reasons behind it, the
33 economics, the logistics, and so on and so forth.
34
35 We then proceed to notify the -- in many instances, it is
36 part of our communication process to communicate with
37 Oak Brook, with specialists that will evaluate the
38 products. For example, I would be contacted in this case
39 for that -- I would talk about yesterday -- about the
40 quality of our products in Costa Rica, about whether or not
41 they are qualified within our terms to be capable of
42 exporting product to another country. That is our normal
43 procedure; that is our normal process.
44
45 Q. Do you know what the centre of the zone in Latin America
46 is?
47 A. Yes, I do. The centre is located in Boca Raton,
48 Florida,, as well as in Puerto Rico we have offices too.
49
50 Q. Puerto Rico is also within the United States territorial
51 boundary, is it not, officially?
52 A. Officially, that is correct.
53
54 Q. Under US DA jurisdiction?
55 A. It is subject to many regulations and interpretations.
56 It depends on people, quality US, the continental US;
57 sometimes it is included, sometimes it is not.
58
59 Q. For the purposes of beef, it is considered to be part of
60 the US territorial -----
