News Shorts and Other Busyness

McLibel Trial Moves To Rainforest Destruction

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 6.

The implication of the McDonald’s Corporation in the destruction of south and central American tropical forest is the last major subject area to be covered by the mammoth McLibel trial.

The case became the longest civil court case in British legal history last December and moves on to the corporation’s involvement in environmental destruction on Feb 22nd.

The large-scale cattle-ranching required to feed the burger giant’s huge appetite for beef is implicated in displacing indigenous farmers in countries like Brazil, forcing them to cut down tropical forest to raise their own herds.

Although this is hard to prove in a court of law, McDonald’s have to ome extent already implicated themselves. After stating in a 1982 corporate letter that “the only Brazilian beef used by McDonald’s is that purchased by the six stores located in Brazil itself,” McDonald’s executive witnesses were hard pressed to explain an internal company document accidentally disclosed to the McLibel defendants. This document revealed that beef purchased from Brazil had been used in UK burger bars in 1983/4.

Dr Gomez Gonzales, McDonald’s International Meat Purchasing Manager, has since admitted in court that Brazilian-reared beef has been imported during the nineties for use in McDonald’s Swiss and Argentinian stores.

Another witness to look forward to during February is Ray Cesca, McDonald’s Director of Global Purchasing. He has already revealed in a written statement that McDonald’s first Costa Rican store used beef reared on tropical forest land levelled just ten years previously.

If you would like to see how Ray Cesca explains his way out of that one, then go and see him grilled live; the court case is open to the public and due to go on until at least June in room 35, High Court, The Strand, London. For sizable coverage of the extraordinary corporate exposures coming out of the McLibel trial, see SQUALL 11. There’s undoubtedly more to come.