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Palm Oil
Palm oil is the world’s second largest oil crop, used extensively in food, body care, and industrial products. Palm oil is made from the fruit of oil palm trees which are usually planted in large plantations. Malaysia and Indonesia are the world’s largest palm oil producers with Australians consuming an average of 10kg of palm oil per person each year.
Demand for palm oil is constantly growing. At the moment, most Palm Oil ends up in hundreds of food products including margarine, chocolate and even oven chips. It is also used in cosmetics and for use in biodiesel. It is usually labelled as “vegetable oil” on the ingredients list, so consumers can be forgiven for not knowing the damage that their buying habits are doing to the environment.
The cost to the environment is devastating, as in order to harvest Palm Oil tropical rainforests and peatlands in South East Asia are being torn up to provide land for oil palm plantations. Clearing these forests and draining and burning peatlands to grow palm oil releases more carbon emissions than burning fossil fuels, causing greater emissions of greenhouse gases accelerating the effects of climate change. |
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The palm oil industry is now considered by scientists as the biggest threat to the orang-utan, with their main rainforest habitat being wiped out due to Palm Oil harvesting and plantations, causing the Orangutan to now be on the brink of extinction.
Orangutans are amongst humankind’s closest relatives – demonstrating a high level of intelligence and an ability to solve problems. The orangutan is also a key indicator to the health of the rainforest.
In their desperate attempt to find food when the chainsaws move into the rainforests, orangutans are reduced to foraging in the oil palm plantations, where they are either killed, or those who do survive which are mainly babies, are sold into the illegal pet trade. |
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EU Food Labelling Directive
Colchester Zoo is a member of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and as such is supportive of its efforts to ensure that clear labelling of the presence of palm oil in food products is imposed to ensure EU citizens are better informed of the potential environmental, social and ethical impacts of their purchases.
Currently there is no mandatory requirement in the EU for manufacturers to label palm oil (manufactured from the fruit of oil palm) or palm kernel oil (manufactured from the seeds of oil palm) on food products. As mentioned, Palm oil is generally labelled using the generic term ‘vegetable oil’ and is therefore a hidden ingredient of a wide variety of food products commonly found on EU supermarket shelves. |
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Colchester Zoo would like to see
• The inclusion of palm oil or palm kernel oil clearly labelled in food products sold in the EU;
• An amendment to be included in the current proposal to make mandatory the labelling of oil palm derivatives in food products sold in the EU;
• Whilst acknowledging the difficulties of manufacturers in tracing combined vegetable oils for use in products, that the use of the phrases ‘May contain products derived from oil palm’ or ‘May contain palm oil’ be made mandatory for products that knowingly contain palm oil or where it cannot be guaranteed that palm oil is not included in the product;
• Where a product label contains a mandatory phrase indicating the use of oil palm products that an additional mandatory element should be to indicate whether the palm oil is from certified sustainable sources or is from unsustainable sources;
• Where palm oil is not contained in a food product and where the remaining ingredients do not impact negatively on tropical forests or the species contained therein that manufacturers are encouraged to develop ‘orangutan friendly’ optional labelling schemes to further increase consumer choice.
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