Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 16

     
     1        at the front of the witness box?
     2        A.   Thank you.
     3
     4   MR. MORRIS: I will continue to read the next statement which is
     5        signed 29th August, 1995:
     6
     7        "Addendum regarding cattle ranching in the cerrado regions
     8        of Brazil.
     9
    10        There are two principal reasons for the loss of cerrado
    11        habitat in Brazil:  soya production and cattle ranching.
    12        Soya production has been dealt with in an earlier
    13        addendum.  This addendum concentrates on the effects of
    14        cattle ranching.
    15
    16        I understand there has been some confusion in court about
    17        whether or not the cerrado is tropical forest.  Cerrado has
    18        accurately been described as "a complex of vegetation
    19        types".  It ranges all the way from low dry scrub to dense
    20        wet forest.  Moreover, the border between cerrado and
         closed canopy rainforest is extremely complex, with
    22        outliers of cerrado extending up to hundreds of miles into
    23        the rainforest, and to outliers of the rainforest extending
    24        similarly into the cerrado.  Some of the "gallery forest"
    25        that runs along rivers penetrating the cerrado would
    26        rightly be described as rainforest.
    27
    28        One of the tragedies of cattle ranching in the cerrado is
    29        that it has indiscriminately destroyed a huge range of
    30        habitats.  In clearing the land for ranching, participants
    31        have made no distinction between vegetation types.
    32        Individual ranches will take in land that was once of a
    33        savannah type as well as land which could accurately have
    34        been described as rainforest.
    35
    36        Cattle ranching in States such as Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais
    37        and Goias - some of those in which this very broad complex
    38        of vegetation types called cerrado occurs - has had a
    39        devastating impact, destroying thousands of square
    40        kilometres of this mixed habitat. Deforested cerrado has
         been one of the major sources of supply for Brazilian beef.
    42
    43        My attention has been drawn to a map of the four
    44        northernmost plants that McDonald's make use of in Brazil.
    45        Brazilian beef plants characteristically take cattle from a
    46        large hinterland.  I am informed that when the Barretos
    47        plant supplied McDonald's UK, it took cattle from up to
    48        1000km away.  Using this figure as a guideline, I have
    49        measured vegetation maps of Brazil and find that radii of a
    50        1000km from the 2 northernmost plants include substantial 
    51        areas of mixed cerrado both south of and within the area 
    52        designated in Brazil as Amazonia Legal, including the south 
    53        of the state of Para. Some of these cerrado areas include
    54        significant stands of rainforest.  The radii also
    55        incorporate significant regions of closed canopy
    56        rainforest, much of which has, in this region, been lost to
    57        cattle ranching in recent years.  If McDonald's is drawing
    58        its beef from these areas, it is using ex-rainforest land."
    59
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