The low-down on palm oil
The WOW! Factor
By VIRGINIA WINDER – Taranaki Daily News. New Zealand
14/10/2009
If you ever wondered what the fuss about palm oil is all about, read The Lorax by Dr Seuss.
It tells a story of how the Once-ler started the senseless thneed industry, which led to the destruction of all the truffula trees. Along the way, the thneed industry destroyed the environment and habitat for all the creatures who lived there and the sad, greedy Once-ler lived to regret creating a wasteland.
Now imagine the truffula trees are the rainforests in Borneo and Indonesia. Replace the thneeds with palm trees and the brown bar-ba-loot with the orang-utan, the Sumatran tiger, Asian elephant and sun bear.
In this story, the Lorax is the Auckland Zoo.
“Our job is to be an advocate and a voice for the animals,” zoo conservation officer Peter Fraser says.
“The biggest threat to these animals is the expansion of palm oil plantations.”
As if in agreement, an endangered Siamang gibbon, the larger of the lesser apes, screeches in the background.
Fraser says he has no beef with the palm oil industry when it’s using land that’s already degraded – though this may pose other problems down the track.
What he, the zoo, environmentalists and even the United Nations object to is the felling of massive tracts of rainforest to replant with palm trees.
“The problem is that the majority of palm oil plantations are planted when the existing rainforest is slashed and burnt or felled for its hardwood,” the zoo’s website says.
To find out how bad the felling problems are, let’s turn to a 2007 report from the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), which says: “The tropical forests of Southeast Asia, important for local livelihoods and the last home of the orang-utan are disappearing far faster than experts have previously supposed.”
The report says that natural rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo are being cleared so rapidly that 98 per cent could be destroyed by 2022 without urgent action.
“The rate of loss, which has accelerated in the past five years, outstrips a previous UNEP report released in 2002 at the World Summit for Sustainable Development. Then, experts estimated that most of the suitable orang-utan habitat would be lost by 2032.”
Overall, the more up-to-date report concludes that loss of orang-utan habitat is happening at a rate up to 30 per cent higher than thought.
Back at the zoo, Fraser explains that in the past four years, many companies have switched to palm oil because it costs less than other vegetable oils.
“It’s been available for a long time, but now, compared with other products, it’s quite cheap.”
But palm oil, from the fruit of the African oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis), comes at a price.
“It may be cheap now, but we are pushing the cost to the future and we will pay for it in one way or another,” he says, mentioning climate change.
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,” Fraser says.
In the meantime, palm oil is in everything. It is the second-most widely produced edible oil, just behind soybean oil. The edible oil comes from the outside of the palm tree’s fruit. Inside, the kernel provides oil for cosmetics and bath products like soap. New Zealand farmers import the by-product, palm kernel expeller (PKE), as stock feed. In Port Taranaki at the weekend, a vessel carrying a shipment of palm-based animal feed was sprayed with the words “Fonterra climate crime.”
Seven Greenpeace protesters will appear in the New Plymouth District Court tomorrow on charges of intentional damage and entering an exclusion zone without authorisation.
Fraser says that while PKE is a by- product, sale of PKE still supports the palm industry.
“I have a family who are dairy farmers and they are using this product.”
The animal feed is needed for intensification of dairy farming, so cows produce more milk without farmers having to buy more land and more animals. As for food and cosmetics, it’s incredibly difficult to work out if a product contains palm oil or derivatives.
“You almost need an advanced chemistry degree to find out if it does contain oil or not,” Fraser says.
The Auckland Zoo website says surveys show that up to 40 per cent of top supermarket brands contain palm oil.
It’s in everything from biscuits to ice cream.
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.
In addition to reducing demand for unsustainable palm oil production, the campaign also aims to increase consumer demand for sustainable palm oil, which is produced without harm to wildlife.
Fraser says that if consumers begin choosing products without palm oil over those that do, companies will be forced to listen and then change.
That happened when Cadbury began using palm oil in its chocolate. The Auckland Zoo spoke out and the public outcry was so huge that the company went back to its original recipe.
“It was a combined voice,” Fraser says. “Cadbury listened and said: We have made a mistake. And they should be commended.”
Other companies have begun to follow suit. KFC has announced it is switching to a sunflower-canola oil blend for cooking, while Woolworths in Australia has chosen to make its Homebrand products without palm oil.
Fraser says that becoming outspoken about environmental issues is a new direction for zoos, but for them, it’s all about the animals. Not only are the orang-utans at risk of losing their rainforest habitat, they are also seen as the enemy of palm plantations and are killed with machetes.
“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.
Even the national parks in Southeast Asia are being attacked, according to the UNEP.
“New satellite imagery reveals that the illegal logging is now entering a new critical phase. As the demands grow, the industry and international market are running out of cheap illegal timber and are now entering the national parks, where the only remaining timber available in commercial amounts is found,” it says.
It appears, though, that Dr Seuss may have the answer.
“But now,” says the Once-ler, “now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/features/2961791/The-low-down-on-palm-oil
