UK Environmental news
 | Monday 4th May 2009 The problem with Palm Oil. It may seem innocuous enough but the palm oil industry is having a devastating effect throughout many developing countries, in particular Malaysia and Indonesia. Vast swathes of indigenous forest have been cleared to make way for the production of the cheapest cooking oil there is. Many endangered species such as Orang-Utans and Sun bears are rapidly losing there natural habitat as this industry expands. In order to clear the land the forests were burned. Much of this was peat forest which is a naturally dense carbon store. Such burning releases huge quantities of CO2 in to the atmosphere. You may not have noticed it, but palm oil appears in a great many Bristish consumer prouducts. Companies including Cadbury, Premier Foods, Unilever, Nestle and all the major supermarket chains to name but a few, provide brands that contain palm oil. Checking the ingredients won't necessarily help you either as palm oil is often listed under the general term “vegetable oil”. The reason for the prevalence of palm oil in our food is that the plant has some pretty impressive qualities. It's cheaper to produce than soy or rapeseed and produces a lot more yiled per hectare than those other plants. The comparitively low production costs are passed on to the manufacturers. A tonne of palm oil costs approximately $400, again cheaper then soy and rapeseed.The end product is also healthier than hydrogenated fats, although it is still high in saturated fats. The main cost of the enterprise is not felt by the consumers and manfacturers however, it is felt by the indigenous wildlife of Borneo and Sumatra. I personally spent a month in Malaysian Borneo recently and was shocked by the ammount of palm oil plantations. While trekking in Sabah and Sarawak, I expected to find dense jungle in manay areas. Instead I found plantations are far as the eye can see. Even a 6 hour bus journey revealed little more than more palm oil to the horizon. It is worse on the Indonesian side with less regulation. Logging and land clearing companies often work without permission and hire armed guards to dissuade local forest rangers from interfering. |
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