The dirt on Palm Oil

[Nick Potter]

A recent article from The Independent newspaper in the UK makes important reading:

"It's an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won't find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It's there though, under "vegetable oil". And its impact, 7,000 miles away, is very visible indeed. The wildlife-rich forests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being chain-sawed to make way for palm-oil plantations. Thirty square miles are felled daily in a burst of habitat destruction that is taking place on a scale and speed almost unimaginable in the West. When the rainforests disappear almost all of the wildlife – including the orangutans, tigers, sun bears, bearded pigs and other endangered species – and indigenous people go. In their place come palm-oil plantations stretching for mile after mile, producing cheap oil – the cheapest cooking oil in the world – for everyday food."

This is an environmental issue and a human rights issue (due to the effects on indigenous peoples). You can find the article here.

UK brands that use un-certified palm oil include Cadbury, Unilever, Nestle, Wrigleys, Mars and Kelloggs - though I have not investigated their products in New Zealand.
[UPDATE July 2009 - see discussion on Cadbury NZ below]

Auckland Zoo has a continuing campaign about the use of non-sustainable palm oil, because of the rainforest destruction and effect on natural orangutan habitat. You may wish to contact them if you'd like to support a campaign.

[Nick Potter]

Cadbury New Zealand just announced that they will stop using Palm Oil in their products!
As this media article comments:

Cadbury New Zealand managing director Matthew Oldham said he was "really sorry" and that the decision was in direct response to consumer feedback, including hundreds of letters and emails."At the time, we genuinely believed we were making the right decision, for the right reasons. But we got it wrong,” he said."Now we’re putting things right as soon as we possibly can, and hope Kiwis will forgive us. The change will be made within the next few weeks, he said.

Members of the nearly 3500-strong Facebook group 'Take palm oil out of Cadbury chocolate bars' were jubilant at this morning's news."Power to the people", said one member.

This is a great illustration of how effective concerned citizens can be - and a great case study in how to use new social technologies (including Facebook, Twitter, Intersect and many other social networks) for good!

Thank you Cadbury NZ!
Firstly, for bringing palm oil to the attention of the whole NZ population.
Secondly, for (finally) admitting it wasn't a good move to use palm oil - and for seeing the benefits of adapting when the public made it clear to you what we care about.

[Phil Tate]

Awesome. Tremendous result.

[Martin Adlington]

well done guys - now we have to get fonterra to stop feeding palm kernal to cows....

[Carl Chenery]

Here's another story..

This story 'Dairy farmers 'killing rain forests' from Stuff says that NZ imports 1/4 of the worlds Palm Kernel extract (by-product of palm oil extract).
Lachlan McKenzie, Federated Farmers' dairy chairman, says "The palm is grown for oil, not its by-product. This is the husk that is left after the oil is taken out... palm oil is the prime driver of this."

I think the Cadbury example is a good one that has brought something to our attention and also for a company admitting it wasn't a good move and then changing when it was showed that people care about this.

People do care.
Be great to see which products palm oil shows up in and see the alternative products. Not to single out palm oil but rather as an example and journey to understanding our impacts and then ensuring that they are positive ones. This is not to say that approaches to palm oil production isn't problematic- bullying people to then clear forests to have more cows doesn't feel like a wise solution for our climate.

As I said, be great to see which products palm oil shows up in and see the alternative products. Crowd-source the products, ingredients and alternatives?

[Carl Chenery]

I see Auckland Zoo keepers have begun with the list of orangutan-friendly products:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&...

[Nick Potter]

The news about Fonterra has made international headlines too. For example, check out this article on Treehugger (in New York).

Fonterra's website promotes the image that "It all starts with green grass, clean water and healthy cows. We're dedicated to looking after the environment so the things we enjoy today are preserved for the generations of tomorrow." They also state that "Year after year, our farmers in New Zealand work with the land and their cows to bring quality milk to millions of people around the world. They have passed their farming expertise down through the generations, keeping alive the time-honoured traditions that have catapulted New Zealand to the forefront of the global dairy industry."

Feeding palm kernels to cows doesn't look like a time-honoured tradition to me - and it could be a very bad strategic move for the company. This may have caught Fonterra by surprise, but they would be well-advised to learn from Cadbury. It's also worth considering the impact of consumer pressure on Unilever / Dove soap. Check out this video that almost a million people have seen on YouTube alone:


According to Greenpeace, "Thanks to the staggering public support for our international Dove campaign in April 2008, Unilever has now agreed to play their part in saving the Paradise Forests of South East Asia.They have agreed to support the call by Greenpeace for an immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil plantations. They have also agreed to urgently contact other major companies calling on them to support the moratorium."

This is an issue that is going to get increasing attention from citizens in NZ as well as countries that Fonterra exports to. Given that palm kernel only makes up a small proportion of the food given to NZ cows, it would be any easy (not to mention wise and responsible) move to remove palm kernel supplements from the NZ milk production chain.

[Joshua Vial]

Greenpeace have a petition going at the moment calling for John Key to intervene with Fonterra - seems unlikely to get traction to me but an extra email or two couldn't hurt I'm sure.


http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/action/palm-kernel/

[Jasmine Cargill]

Greenpeace activists have boarded carrying palm kernel from Indonesia to stop it being unloaded at Port Tauranga.
Images coming soon on: http://live.greenpeace.org.nz/

[Kera O'Regan]

Could there be potential for NZ at least, if not other countries, to make some kind of laws that mean that 'contains vegetable oils' is no longer acceptable on packaging so that the types of vegetable oils that are used(ie. Palm Oil or Conola or whatever) would have to be clearly labelled?
It would also be really good for food campanies, to list where their products come from, not just palm oil but all the products. I'm really interested to see exactly where all our food is coming from and I'm sure lots of other New Zealanders would be interested too- especially with the food miles issue on too.
Imagine seeing on a label "Contains: Palm Oil-Indonesia" I think that would put a whole bunch of people off buying the products and I think we have a right to know exactly where our food is coming from.

[Nick Potter]

Here's some excerpts from another NZ article on Palm Oil in the Taranaki Daily News:

It refers to this United Nations Environment Program report from 2007 that found:

A scenario released by UNEP in 2002 suggested that most natural rainforest in Indonesia would be degraded by 2032. Given the rate of deforestation in the past five years, and recent widespread investment in oil palm plantations and biodiesel refineries, this may have been optimistic. New estimates suggest that 98% of the forest may be destroyed by 2022, the lowland forest much sooner. (p 5)

Today, the rapid increase in (palm oil) plantation acreage is one of the greatest threats to orangutans and the forests on which they depend. In Malaysia and Indonesia, it is now the primary cause of permanent rainforest loss. (p 28)

The NZ article continues...
Auckland zoo conservation officer Peter Fraser says a palm tree has a life of about 20 years. A plantation can then be replanted once, but then the land becomes useless. "In 40 years' time, we are going to have a wasteland of degraded land that's not productive." ... The Auckland Zoo website says surveys show that up to 40 per cent of top supermarket brands contain palm oil...Reading labels may not help if you're looking to avoid it, because there is no legislation in place to tell people a product contains palm oil. Instead, it may simply say "vegetable oil". In a bid to make it easier for people to choose products that don't contain the oil, Auckland Zoo is joining six Australian zoos in the Don't Palm Us Off campaign. The aim of the campaign is to change labelling legislation in both countries to make it mandatory to list palm oil on products....

...There are plantation owners who will offer $20 [US] for a dead orang- utan. They are pests in the plantations - they will destroy trees and eat the palms. But when that's all there is, what do you expect an animal to do?...

Another environmental organisation, the Palm Oil Action group, is also campaigning for change. It says the palm oil industry costs the lives of about 50 endangered orangutans every week and is a major cause of global warming.

"In Southeast Asia alone, 300 soccer fields are deforested every hour for palm oil plantations," the group states on its website.

[Megan Hosking]

Here's the petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/31757.html