RARELY has a variant of a standard nutrient been as vilified as palm oil, aka the killer of rainforests, destroyer of communities and warmer of the world – slurs that are occasionally justified. But this villain is being rehabilitated.
Bad reputations are hard to shake off, however. Witness the potshot taken by Ségolène Royal, France’s minister of ecology, sustainable development and energy, against a popular hazelnut chocolate spread. “We should stop eating Nutella… because it’s made with palm oil,” she declared on TV, equating the oil with rainforest destruction.
Royal was perhaps unaware that consumer campaigns by conservation bodies and human rights organisations have caused some oil-palm growers and food producers to clean up their act; a clear example of the power of campaign groups and shoppers to challenge activity that damages the planet in distant countries.
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“Conservation campaigns have seen consumers pressure oil palm growers to clean up their act”
Italian company Ferrero, maker of Nutella, said last year that it only uses oil with Sustainable Palm Oil Segregated Certification, meaning that products are now produced solely with oil produced sustainably and ethically.
Last year the US food firm Kellogg’s also bowed to public pressure, announcing it would only buy palm oil from companies that don’t destroy tropical rainforests to make way for palm plantations. And since January 2012, 75 per cent of the palm oil that food company uses has been traceable to plantations certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The other 25 per cent is bought via GreenPalm – a scheme that boosts sustainable producers.
In 2010, consumer goods firm Unilever listened to the demands of tens of thousands of consumers to source sustainably produced palm oil, and is committed to purchasing all of its palm oil from such sources by the end of 2015.
The push for ethically sourced palm oil has come mainly from the European Union. There is still a long road ahead for consumer advocacy in other Western countries and other major importers of palm oil such as China and India.
Royal, realising her gaffe, and in a move that would surely please the ambassador, offered Ferrero “a thousand apologies”.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Spread the happy”
