Activists target goods manufactured with palm oil

“Companies like Hostess and Nestle are perpetuating rainforest destruction and human rights abuses by using palm oil in their products,” said Leila Salazar-Lopez of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

On Tuesday, Salazar-Lopez’s group led a series of demonstrations targeting supermarkets in a number of major cities and towns across the nation, including Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco.

The demonstrators demanded supermarkets apply stickers reading, “Warning! Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction” on any item that contains palm oil, an ingredient that is widely used in food and cosmetics products.

Researchers say that increasing worldwide demand for palm oil is driving the construction of plantations in the tropical forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea.

These forests are disappearing at the rate of 2.5 million acres every year due to clear cutting to make way for palm oil plantations. Scientists warn that the continued construction of plantations in the tropical jungles can have disastrous consequences for the global environment.

Indonesia’s tropical forests are considered some of the world’s great carbon sinks and hence a solid source of defense in the fight against global warming.

“Our goal is to educate consumers and work with companies who use palm oil in their products to stop destroying rainforests. If Americans knew the extent to which their food and common household items were contributing to rainforest destruction, they’d probably think twice before buying them.”
– Leila Salazar-Lopez, Rainforest Action NetworkPeat lands in the province of Riau on the island of Sumatra, for example, have the capacity to store over 14 billion tons of carbon — roughly one year’s global greenhouse gas emissions. But that is changing fast as commercial concerns continue to move in.

The environmental group Greenpeace claims that, due to palm oil plantation growth, about 25 percent of the peat forests in Riau have already disappeared, and there is so far no indication that the remaining ones will be shown any mercy.

Forest destruction is considered responsible for about one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Greenpeace research links 4 percent of annual global emissions to the damage caused by palm oil companies to peat forests in Indonesia.

As a result of the massive destruction of its forests, Indonesia has become the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases — behind only China and the United States. But in the face of this information, most companies still seem unwilling to change their behavior, activists say.

Research shows that major companies such as Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM), Burger King, Cargill, Dove Soap, Kraft, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever are indirectly driving much of the forest destruction due to their demand for more palm oil for their products.

Such products include Pringles, KitKat candy, Oreo cookies, and Philadelphia cream cheese, among many others.

In addition to organizing protests this week, RAN also sent a letter to the companies involved in palm oil production. The letter urged them to stop using palm oil in their products until production in the tropical forests returns to a sustainable level.

Although there are over 300 companies currently engaged in palm oil-related business, RAN has targeted ADM, Bunge, and Cargill as the leading importers of palm oil into the United States.

Earlier this year, a nonprofit group that monitors corporate activity worldwide named ADM one of the “worst” corporations of the year for its massive operations in Indonesia’s peat lands to harvest palm oil for use in making biofuels.

The group, Corporate Accountability International, also noted that the destruction of Indonesia’s peat lands threatens the existence of endangered species like the orangutan, which could be totally wiped out by 2012.

RAN says so far its citizen-researchers have found about 500 different products that are prepared with the use of palm oil. All the information on palm oil-related products is being gathered by consumers and added to the Web site www.TheProblemWithPalmOil.org.

“Our goal is to educate consumers and work with companies who use palm oil in their products to stop destroying rainforests,” said RAN’s Salazar-Lopez. “If Americans knew the extent to which their food and common household items were contributing to rainforest destruction, they’d probably think twice before buying them.”

Source: http://us.oneworld.net