Thank you for your inquiry regarding our use of palm oil and how it impacts both the environment and our company. We are working everyday within the PepsiCo system to operate in a more sustainable fashion. In particular, we are focusing on reducing our environmental footprint — including energy, water and packaging. We are also seeking to improve the nutritional quality of our portfolio.
As it specifically regards palm oil, please be assured that we are supporting the efforts of our suppliers to address issues related to palm oil. Currently we do utilize palm oil in some of our products, though we are migrating away from its use worldwide in favor of oils lower in saturated fat. In fact, Frito-Lay North America moved out of palm oils in the 1980s and into soy oils. As of 2005, Frito-Lay North America uses corn oil and sunflower oil because they are lower in saturated fat and do not produce trans fats. And in the U.K., our Walker’s business switched to 100% high-oleic sunflower oil (“Sunseed”) to make their famous crisps. We believe this is a step in the right direction.
We encourage our suppliers of palm oil to support sustainable efforts. In fact, we’ve asked our suppliers of palm oil to become members of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. As a customer, we seek supply-partners who will take responsible actions to address these issues.

Respectfully,
Paul Boykas
Director, Public Policy
Pepsico

First of all, I apologize that you have not received a call back. We have been talking to companies for the last two days about our concerns about palm oil in food, soaps, cosmetics and detergents. It’s possible that we made a mistake by including one of your products, but I doubt it. Only companies that market products that contain palm oil, palm kernel oil, palmitate or palmitic acid were put on our list and sent letters.

I’ll make sure someone gets back to your tomorrow so we can tell you which of your products we found contains palm oil. Leila

P.S. Anyone can check the cosmetic database for products that contain palm oil at: http://www.CosmeticsDatabase.com

We sell high-end, gourmet specialty foods. We called RFN to find out what in our portfolio of foods had palm oil in it. W
Our intent is to call our suppliers and pressure them. We would also like to stop selling products with Palm Oil in it. But…

To date, RFN has not returned any of our calls (we left three) regarding this. Nobody who emailed us (we rec’d 1,678 emails) could identify any products on our site that had the offending ingredient: palm oil.

I’d say the campaign was successful in sending out 1,300,000 pieces of unsolicited email.

Because RFN or those who emailed have been unable or unwilling to identify for us the offensive items, I’d say any other claims of success from this campaign are dubious at best.