Day 159 - 20 Jul 95 - Page 09

     
     1        "including and/or", the Mato Grosso and Goias regions
     2        bordering areas of ex-rainforest land.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I was certainly concentrating on including
     5        "and/or", but I have a query in my mind as well about
     6        "bordering".  Do not think I have decided this matter.
     7        I do not find it easy at all; but there we are.
     8
     9   MR. MORRIS:  If that is the only sticking point, then the whole
    10        "regions bordering areas of ex-rainforest land" is not
    11        essential.  I mean, the facts are the same.  That could be
    12        a matter of argument at -----
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I am trying to say is this, and then
    15        I will shut up.  I see all this with regard to your
    16        knock-on effect part of your claim, which is what it seems
    17        to me Mr. Shane and Mr. Monbiot are really dealing with.
    18        What, at the moment, I am concerned about is that part of
    19        your claim, or that part of the proposed amendment No. 1
    20        which may be suggesting beef actually from land which was
         rain forest within the not too distant past.  Because if we
    22        went back to when the Conquistadors were trampling up --
    23        they were Portuguese, I suppose, and not Spanish speaking
    24         -- when they were trampling up the Amazon Basin and areas,
    25        I can imagine there might have been very considerable areas
    26        of rain forest.  Let us just put it in this century.
    27
    28        What concerns me is the extent to which there is any
    29        evidence, or reason to suppose you will have evidence, that
    30        any McDonald's beef actually comes off land which was
    31        rain forest this century.  Sever that from the knock-on
    32        effect.  Try and keep them in separate parcels.
    33
    34   MR. MORRIS:  Our understanding is that the majority of the
    35        tropical forest in the Amazon Basin, certainly in the
    36        southern area of it, has been lost due to, either due to
    37        cattle ranching or colonisation which is caused by the
    38        cattle ranching in bordering areas.  McDonald's are,
    39        clearly, part of that whole process.
    40
         Whether a particular area was tropical forest, was cerrado
    42        or rain forest, if the damage has been done, if the effect
    43        is as defamatory because the damage is the same, which is,
    44        I think, the argument that if you are accused of murder and
    45        you are found out -- that you are liable to say you are a
    46        murderer because you murdered someone and it is found out
    47        you murdered somebody else, then the sting of it is the
    48        same and the libel is rejected.
    49
    50        As far as we are concerned, any destruction of cerrado 
    51        forest in the Amazon Basin is part of the tropical forest 
    52        area identified in the leaflet, and cattle ranching is 
    53        equally guilty for that.
    54
    55        As for Mr. Rampton's argument about extensive particulars
    56        which could easily be argued about the use of UK beef show
    57        us exactly which herds -- I think this was raised earlier
    58        in the case -- suffered which diseases, or whatever.  That
    59        was in terms of welfare.
    60