| name: | Charles Secrett |
| occupation: | Executive Director of Friend of the Earth (FOE) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland |
| relevance: | Environmental Expert |
previous experience:
1/ In 1985, following extensive research on tropical deforestation, he launched Friends of the Earth's International Rainforest Campaign, the first in the world to investigate and campaign against the range of economic, social and political causes of tropical forest clearance. He led the campaign for nearly three years.
2/ Since 1985, he has investigate first-hand various development activities and schemes in tropical forest areas, including: logging in peninsula Malaysia and the state of Sarawak (1986); mining and colonisation settlements in Para, Eastern Amazonia (1987); and, logging and forestry operations in Costa Rica and Nicaragua (1991-2). Official observer at the International Tropical Timber Organisation (1987).
3/ During the above trips and on many other occasions, he has had frequent meetings with relevant Government Ministers and officials, academics and representatives from natural resource and land-use industries and non-governmental organisations about a wide range of issues relating to tropical forest, and tropical forest land, use and management.
4/ He has read and studied a considerable body of official and scientific literature on most aspects of tropical forest ecology and related economic and social development issues.
quotes:
Once stocks of both imported beef, such as the meat used
in the fast-food trade, and genuinely domestic reared
(ie. in the U.S. itself) beef had been checked bv USDA
inspectors, all such supplies consequently earned the
status of US graded beef, and were sorted and sold on to
the retail trade according to quality and end-use
criteria - but, crucially, not according to the country
of origin of the cattle used to provide such beef.
Thus, from information available to me, I did not believe then, and do not believe now, that, for the period up until the end of 1986 at least, such claims can me substantiated and proven absolutely - whatever the intentions of the McDonald's Corporation with regard to the origin of the beef supplies used in their U.S. restaurants.
Therefore, it is my considered view that, as McDonald's are unable to categorically prove that all the beef supplies used in their United States restaurants at all times only came from cattle reared in the U.S., and never originated from South or Central American countries as the overwhelming weight of circumstantial evidence points toward for the 1970s and up at least until the end of 1986, it is surely right for McDonald's to now admit publicly that uncertainty, for their public statements to the contrary to be withdrawn, and for them to recognise that critics of the beef-purchasing and use practices and policies have been entitled to raise such concerns in public.
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