Senator seeks palm oil poverty …

by Tim Wilson, November 6, 2009

Following on from Palming off livelihoods? South Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon, has proposed introducing legislation into the Parliament for Food Standards Australia and New Zealand to require the separate labelling of palm oil on groceries. The article appears below.

Please help us live: Karta the orang-utan joins palm oil labelling campaign
The Advertiser (Adelaide), 05/11/2009, by Miles Kemp

ADELAIDE Zoo orang-utan Karta will today join a national campaign urging the Federal Government to force manufacturers to label food containing palm oil, a product destroying her species’ habitat.

Adelaide Zoo has told the Federal Government up to seven out of 10 supermarket items contain palm oil – sold as “vegetable oil” – and are part of a largely rogue industry destroying forests in Asia.

Adelaide Zoo chief executive Chris West said the oil was most commonly found in snack foods, soaps, cosmetics, detergent and shampoo and shoppers should be able to read “palm oil” on the products ingredient list.

“This will be like the dolphin friendly tuna approach, we are saying to people that consumers should be allowed to choose products which are orang-utan-friendly,” he said.

Mr West said in South-East Asia alone 300 football field-sized areas are cut down to plant oil palm trees and 95 per cent of the industry was unregulated so that it did not have to comply with environmental rules. The Sumatran Tiger and many other species were also under threat from the industry, with only 400 of the tigers left in the wild.

South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, who will soon introduce a Bill to force the labelling issue, said shoppers had a right to know what they were eating. “Palm Oil is one of the unhealthiest fats you can consume and we are all eating it and we don’t realise,” he said.

“The average Australian consumes 10 kilos of the stuff every year and 85 per cent of palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, which also happens to be where orangu-tans primarily live. Ninety per cent of orang-utan habitat has already been lost through clearing, and more than 1000 orang-utans die every year as a result.”

Free trade advocates have criticised the global campaign against the palm oil industry but Mr West said campaigners did not want to destroy the regulated industry which was environmentally friendly.

Director of the Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs Tim Wilson said poverty was the root cause of deforestation and orang-utan population loss. “If you want to reduce environmental degradation the best option is poverty reduction,” he said.

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