Palm Oil & Orangutans

* Soap
* Chocolate
* Toothpaste
* Biscuits
* Cosmetics
* Muesli & Breakfast Cereals
* Snack Foods
* Frozen Meals And Fish
* Frozen Snacks, Pies, Pizzas And Pastry
* Frozen Chips And Wedges
* Margarines, Spreads & Peanut Butter
* Instant Noodles
* Shampoo
* Moisturiser
* Laundry Powder
Note: this is not a finite list as there may be other products which contain palm oil.

According to Friends Of The Earth "Even the greenest consumer can't avoid products with palm oil in them. This is because palm oil is often listed as vegetable oil on product labels.

The Australian Orangutan Project has this to say:- "Palm Oil is the greatest current threat to Orangutans. Vast areas of habitat are cleared for Palm Oil plantations every day. Protecting this land is critical to the Orangutans survival.

This issue affects all of us with over 1 million kilogrammes of Palm Oil is imported into Australian each year."

Photo used under a Creative Commons licence from Wikimedia Commons

Palm Oil has been a popular frying medium in the fast food industry for many years for several reasons. Firstly, it has a high yield per hectare which makes it fairly cheap and that's important when you are trying to keep the price of your menu competitive. It also has a relatively high boiling point making it ideal for fast food cooking.

For these reasons it has only been with reluctance that major fast food corporations are slowly coming around to finding alternatives in their food production. The impetus to change was largely due to the high level of saturated fat in palm oil and the search for a healthier alternative in response to consumer demand.

MacDonalds Australia made the switch to a canola-sunflower blend in March 2006. It would be more than two years later before Yum! restaurants, which includes KFC, would changeover citing ensuring continuous supply and taste continuity as its two main reasons for the delay. read more..

In the confectionary business, Cadbury is arguably New Zealnd's favourite brand. So it comes as good news to concerned chocolate lovers that Cadbury, who had substituted cocoa butter with vegetable fat including palm oil, have switched back after a huge public backlash. read more..

Palm Oil Action is a great site for more information on steps you can take to get behind this worthy cause.

If you have more examples of companies, products or organisations who are addressing this issue positively, please feel free to add them to the comments section below

Of course, killing off the palm oil industry will have a substantial impact on the livelihoods of many producers. There also seem to be many uses for palm oil which are beneficial to the health of our planet in other ways. Perhaps the answer lies not in a total boycotting of this product but of ensuring that it is farmed sustainably, that there is no further degradation of virgin forest for new plantations, that there is a stop put to clearing and burning of forests for plantations.

Those who support the palm oil industry (example: Palm Oil Truth Foundation) insist that the countries where palm oil is produced contain the highest proportion of forest of any nation. What they neglect to tell you is that these same countries are also guilty of the highest rate of deforestation of any nation. In fact, Indonesia can proudly claim an entry in The 2008 Guinness Book Of Records as World Champion In Deforestation. According to the website Indonesia Matters "The citation in the 2008 Guinness World Records will read:

Of the 44 countries which collectively account for 90% of the world's forests, the country which pursues the highest annual rate of desforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of forest destroyed each year between 2000-2005; a rate of 2% annually or 51 km2 (20 miles2) destroyed every day."

Greenpeace protests against Neste Oil in Finland, producers of biofuel processed from palm oil.