Last year I read a WWF report about deforestation in Borneo… in that report said that total area deforested in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) is 15 million ha because of palm oil expansion…. I laughed then… because total area cultivated by oil palm in Kalimantan now is not more than 1,5 million ha …. so do not exaggerate or miss interpret data…..

In US, to produce the same amount of vegetable oil, the farmer destroy 90 million ha land every 4 months but in Indonesia the farmer just destroy 6,7 million ha for oil palm every 25 years. See USDA and FAO report. So who is the biggest destroyer?

If you avoid palm oil, you must also avoid soy oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil … he he he and you can use human oil? what kind of human oil? oil from sex activities…. because not destroy rain forest… oh no… excuse me, if you use condom, it’s mean you also destroy rain forest for rubber plantations….

Thanks for your work on this but please don’t flip over or sell out on us like you did on the Great Bear Rainforest sellout, 70% of the 15 million acre unlogged wilderness be sacrificed so RAN and other so called enviro groups could claim some sort of non-existent victory.

Take this campaign all the way until new oil palm plantations are a thing of the past and existing oil palm plantations on endangered areas are restored to rainforests.

The palm oil that they use is legal? Well, good, but I find it hard to trust a country with routinely lax system of enforcement, particularly in rural areas. And even if legal, the government restrictions fall far below any responsible criteria. There need to be real sustainability criteria, and a third party monitoring system to enforce it.

As for soy– there are many different oils that companies could use instead of palm– but what it boils down to is that our rainforests are more valuable than ANY oil product, and that these companies are responsible for making sure that the oil that they produce does not involve destroying our last remaining critical habitats, killing the climate, and displacing frontline communities off their land.

Hope this helps!

So here’s what they said to me:

100% of the palm oil used in Earth Balance originates in peninsular Malaysia and not Eastern Malaysia (i.e. Sarawak and Sabah on the Island of Borneo), the main home for orangutans. As the orangutan.com website points out, slash and burn clearing methods are illegal. We purchase our oil exclusively from reputable, law-abiding plantations which are registered with the Malaysian government.

And then they went on to talk about how if people stop using palm oil, it gets replaced with soy oil, which is even worse because more land has to be cleared for soy to get the same amount of oil.

I don’t know much about the chemistry of ingredients or why one oil is used over another (unless they’re talking omegas, and then I’ve got a good idea), so is the reason that palm and soy oils are being used over other oils because of cost? Or is there some other property that makes it “work” in food products better than others?

Thanks for your help!