A blog post by Mojo Mathers, Green MP

Last weekend I spoke to a group of committed young people attending a workshop on palm oil hosted by the organisers of the Unmask Palm Oil campaign in Orana Wildlife Park.

As highlighted in my previous blog post, palm oil has major environmental and social impacts. This heart wrenching photo of an orang-utan clinging to the last tree in a rainforest being cleared for a palm oil plantation highlights just how dire their plight is.

It is the widespread use  of palm oil in many of the everyday products we consume that drives this destruction of rainforests.

At the moment palm oil hides behind as many as  200 different names, including the generic label “vegetable oil” making it very difficult for consumers to know what they are purchasing.

At that workshop I countered some of the arguments that have been raised against mandatory palm oil labelling

The current status quo where companies can voluntarily declare palm oil in ingredients means that it is only honest companies that face consumer backlash, which is neither fair on these companies nor does it help protect rainforests as consumers often unknowingly just switch to another product containing palm oil.

Only a mandatory system will create a level playing field and allow consumers to choose products without palm oil.

Cost arguments are a red herring. Some people have argued that if companies switch to another ingredient the price of food will go up, therefore we should not expect companies to declare that their product contains palm oil.

This ignores the fact that if cost is the main factor driving consumers’ decision making then they will still purchase the cheapest products even if it contains palm oil.

The issue here is choice. Currently a consumer that wishes to priotise ethical concerns in their decision making and avoid products that doesn’t contain palm oil is not able to do so.

Companies update labels all the time. As long as you have a fair phase in time, a change in labelling standards need not impose excessive extra costs .

The other argument against palm oil labelling is “it will be unfair to people who use palm oil from sustainable sources”. The simple answer is that there is nothing to stop a company from declaring that information on the label, albeit with the proviso that under the new consumer law reform bill that any claims around sustainability must be substantiated.

By Mojo Mathers, Green MP

(Source: blog.greens.org.nz)

People often look upon the efforts of palm oil campaigns and see cold hearted environmentalists wanting to destroy a job rich industry for the sake of some trees and a few animals. What we are actually trying to achieve is quite different.

The problem…

Deforestation is being caused by a decision the industry and government faces. The decision is simply how to meet the excess demand for palm oil. They face two choices:

1. Expansion: slash and burn rainforests and put more oil palm plantations in their place
2. Intensification: stop expanding and produce more off current plantations

The industry is choosing expansion, the consequences off this short term thinking are well known: death of wildlife, indigenous human rights abuses and carbon emissions.

Our campaign and campaigns all over the world exist to see a change from expansion to intensification. This would mean the preservation of jobs and the preservation of the environment. We CAN have the best of both worlds.

Photo: The palm oil industry faces a choice (photo source)

Why the status quo is not an option…

Those who argue we should continue to allow expansion for the sake of jobs need to consider a few things.

Read More

A viral social media campaign to boycott Woolworth’s hot cross buns in Australia is demonstrating the need for mandatory labelling of palm oil.

The picture posted by the Facebook page ‘Trees for Tommy’ shows the ingredients list of the hot cross buns in which palm oil is clearly labelled as an ingredient. The resulting boycott has seen thousands of people refuse to buy the product.

While it is quite right that consumers are refusing to buy a product containing palm oil, we do need to consider what consumers are buying instead. People are going to avoid Woolworths hot cross buns in favour of other options, but without labelling it is impossible to know which of these other options is using palm oil. Well intentioned consumers may well be avoiding one product that contains palm oil for another that also contains palm oil but doesn’t choose to label it.

This situation is why voluntary labelling will never work, transparent companies like Woolworths get bashed for being open and honest while other companies profit off hiding behind generic names and appearing to be palm oil free.

While we don’t support Woolworth’s choice to use palm oil in their products, we do commend them for choosing to label palm oil. Boycotts will only be effective once consumers can be certain the product they are buying instead does not contain palm oil and this will only happen with mandatory labelling.

Sign the petition here