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Palm oil touches our lives every time we take a trip to the supermarket. Palm oil and its derivatives are used in a ubiquitous array of packaged foods, including ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, cereals, breakfast bars, cake mixes, doughnuts, potato chips, instant noodles, frozen sweets and meals, baby formula, margarine, and dry and canned soups.

In the U.S. alone, palm oil imports by companies like Cargill and IOI have jumped 485% in the last decade. The dramatic and growing demand for this crop in recent decades has pushed sprawling palm oil plantations deep into some of the world’s most valuable rainforests. Palm oil production is now one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction around the globe.

Rainforest Destruction by Palm Oil

Nearly 90% percent of palm oil is grown in the tropical countries of Indonesia and Malaysia, where palm oil plantations under active cultivation cover 16 million acres, an area similar in size to West Virginia. The Indonesian government has announced plans to convert approximately 44 million more acres of rainforests, an area the size of Missouri, into palm oil plantations by 2020. The UN’s Environment Program says that “98% of Indonesia’s forest may be destroyed by 2022, the lowland forest much sooner.”

The worst part: This problem is not confined to Indonesia. Rainforest destruction for palm oil expansion is spreading quickly to other valuable rainforest regions, such as Central Africa. That’s one of many reasons why it’s so important that we tackle this problem now. Here are several others:

Download the Case Against Palm Oil factsheet

Endangered species and the loss of biodiversity

Indonesia’s rainforests are one of Earth’s most biologically and culturally rich landscapes. Incredibly, with just 1 percent of the Earth’s land area, Indonesia’s rainforests contain 10% of the world’s known plants, 12% of mammals and 17% of all known bird species. As recently as the 1960s, about 80% of Indonesia was forested. Sadly, Indonesia now has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, with just under half of the country’s original forest cover remaining. Conservative studies suggest more than 2.4 million acres of Indonesian rainforest is cleared and lost each year

The rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra are the last stand for one of humankind’s closest relatives, the orangutan. Orangutans face an extreme risk of extinction within our lifetime. Between 2004-08, the Sumatran orangutan population fell by 14% to 6,600, largely due to loss of habitat for palm oil expansion. The critically endangered Sumatran tiger and Sumatran rhinoceros, both of which have populations of only hundreds left in the wild, are also urgently threatened by palm oil expansion.

Forest communities and human rights

Corporate land grabbing of Indigenous and community forests for palm oil plantations is responsible for serious human rights abuses and persistent conflicts between companies and rural communities. In Indonesia there are over 500 different language groups and between 60 and 110 million Indigenous peoples, many of whom depend on standing natural forests for their livelihoods.

The Indonesian palm oil monitoring group Sawit Watch has identified 663 ongoing land disputes between palm oil companies and rural communities. In too many cases, private armies and paramilitaries have been deployed and people have been killed. Many industrial palm oil plantations also rely on the use of forced and child labor. In Malaysia and Indonesia, child labor has been documented and allegations of modern-day slavery on plantations across Malaysia are common.

Peatlands and climate change

Peatlands are carbon-rich wet ecosystems that have sequestered billions of tons of carbon through thousands of years of accumulating leaf litter and organic material. Indonesia has the world’s highest concentration of tropical peatlands, but the scale of their destruction is so large that it is having globally significant impacts on the climate, similar in scale to the world’s biggest coal and tar sands projects.

Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China, with 85% of its emissions coming from rainforest and peatland destruction. Deforestation in Indonesia is responsible for some 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than the combined emissions from all the millions of cars, trucks, trains, and buses in the U.S. each year combined.

The Solution: Responsible Palm Oil

Consumers are often misled by “RSPO-certified” or “Green Palm” labels. These labels from the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) still allow “certified sustainable” palm oil producers to destroy rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands. Companies that produce, trade and use palm oil must go beyond these inadequate RSPO standards to be truly responsible.

Responsible palm oil is produced without contributing to rainforest or peatland destruction, species extinction, high greenhouse gas emissions or human rights violations. Snack food manufacturing companies need transparent and traceable supply chains from the plantation where the palm oil was sourced to the final product on your grocery store shelf.

What Can You Do? 

• Join the Palm Oil Action Team and organize events in your community to help spread the word and call out the companies using palm oil tied to rainforest destruction in their products.
• Share this blog or blog about the problems with palm oil.
• Become more aware of the snack foods that contain palm oil and reduce your consumption of those products.

How To Identify Palm Oil Products

Palm oil is found in roughly 50% of the products in grocery stores! Below is a list of some of the types of snack food products that contain palm oil to look out for when you’re shopping:

Many snack foods are made using an array of ingredients derived from the African oil palm. It won’t always be obvious when palm oil is lurking under the wrapper, so to take out the guess work, we’ve made a list of the most common palm oil ingredients used in snack foods:

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: THEPROBLEMWITHPALMOIL.ORG

An orangutan looks out from a cage in Aceh, Indonesia. The region’s Sumatran orangutans face extinction due to palm oil development. Photo: David Gilbert

I wish I didn’t have to write this blog post on Earth Day. The rainforest where I saw my first wild orangutan is under threat. I can’t believe it!

There are many reasons to protect the Leuser Protected Ecosystem, a forest area on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Thousands of Indigenous people rely on the forest for their lives and livelihoods, and it is the last place on Earth where endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan and the Sumatran tiger coexist with elephants, rhinos, and Sunbears.

But the government of Aceh, the province in which the Leuser Protected Ecosystem lies, is considering a plan that would remove large regions of forest from the protected area, opening them up to palm oil and pulp plantations, logging, mining, and all of the roads and other infrastructure that come with them. The Indonesian government is now considering the plan, and has the power to reject it.

We need to be making sure that what’s left of the world’s rainforests are protected, not opening them to destructive industries seeking to profit from rainforest destruction. Send Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Secretary General of the Ministry of Forestry Hadi Daryanto an email now calling on them to reject this misguided plan and keep the Leuser Protected Ecosystem protected.

Of course, it’s not just local communities and wildlife that need to be protected from bulldozers and forest fires. Indonesia’s rainforests are a valuable carbon sink—destroying them would make our climate problem that much worse, imperiling the future of everyone on this planet just to enrich a few well-connected businessmen.

Urge the President of Indonesia and the Secretary General of the Ministry of Forestry to protect local communities, endangered species, and the climate now.

Uttuh’s treetop protest is just the latest appearance in a month long ‘invasion’ of forlorn orangutans in Cargill’s hometown outside Minneapolis. Multiple homeless orangutans have already been arrested protesting Cargill’s refusal to implement adequate environmental and social safeguards for the palm oil they trade across the globe.

To make matters worse for the Sumatran Orangutan, Cargill has also recently announced its plan to expand their Indonesian palm oil plantations — meaning that many more Critically Endangered forest species on some of Southeast Asia’s last natural rainforests will fall to Uttuh’s same fate. Target sites include Sulawesi, Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra, homes to thousands of unique species and Indigenous Peoples who rely on the lowland jungles of the rainforest for their survival.

While Cargill claims that it’s simply trying to feed the world and bring economic benefits to local communities in Southeast Asia, as the largest privately held multinational corporation in the US, it can’t hide from its most genuine motivation. Profit. Anthony Yeow, President Director of PT Hindoli, a Cargill oil palm plantation in South Sumatra is quoted as saying, “We are aggressively looking for new areas in Sulawesi, Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra that are environmentally safe to expand our oil-palm footprint.” Aggressively looking to expand our oil palm footprint? Environmentally-safe? Are these not oxymorons?

The truth of the matter is that the demand for palm oil is at an all time high. It’s found in over half the products sold in American grocery stores and has quickly emerged as ‘the’ cheap source of vegetable oil on the market. Its high profitability drives suppliers like Cargill to buy and sell more and more irresponsibly produced palm oil which is contributing to the unchecked expansion of palm oil production in Southeast Asia.

The facts are clear. Indonesia’s forests continue to be destroyed for new palm oil plantations. Endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan continue to be pushed closer to extinction. And, companies like Cargill continue to trade irresponsibly produced palm oil while unaccountable certification systems, including the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), attempt to legitimize the practices of the same companies who are continuing this deforestation!

Cargill needs to play its part in transforming the way palm oil is produced in Indonesia. They need to immediately establish environmental and social safeguards for their supply chain to ensure that the palm oil it produces and trades does not result in the destruction of rainforests, or lead to adversely impacts on Critically Endangered species, like Uttuh, and forest communities.

Let’s make Cargill accountable for their profit-driven assaults on Sumatran Orangutans, like Uttuh, by pushing them to change their palm oil safeguards right now. Sign up to be part of our National Palm Oil Action Team today!

Click here to stand with RAN in calling on the US snack food industry to cut rainforest destruction from its products.

In Cargill’s Hands from Rainforest Action Network on Vimeo

A stranded orangutan watches as her home is bulldozed.

This is the first blog post I’ve written for RAN. I’m the new senior agribusiness campaigner and I was hired because RAN believes that it is more urgent than ever that we take our palm oil work to the next level.

I’m writing this post to lay out the next phase of our campaign to stop the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil. I want to bring each and every one of you reading this on board right from the beginning.

We have reached the last stand for Sumatran orangutans, but it’s not too late to save them. Many Americans are being made into unwitting accomplices in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests—which provide crucial habitat for a number of endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan—because palm oil is in half of all the products on their neighborhood grocery store’s shelves. In the months ahead, we’re going to tackle this problem at its source.

We’ve just sent letters to 20 snack food companies—makers of some of the most popular brand name products in America—alerting them to the rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction in their supply chains.

Stand with us: Sign our petition and demand the snack food industry remove rainforest destruction from its products.

We’re waiting for the companies’ responses to our letters, and we’re giving them this one chance to avoid being publicly named and shamed. Some of them might not even realize the impact of the palm oil they use in their products. In the meantime, we’re gearing up to launch a bold new campaign that will shift the companies who are the most unwilling to change.

But none of these companies will adopt new safeguards to keep rainforest destruction out of their supply chains if they think you aren’t paying attention. That’s why it’s so important that you sign the petition and stand with us.

We can’t thank you enough for all the work you’ve done to stand up to the corporations that are destroying Indonesia’s precious rainforests and putting orangutans out of a home for palm oil. Every change we’ve made in the world is thanks to you, your hard work and dedication. But our work is far from done.

Please sign our petition now, and then stay tuned. We’ll be in touch soon with more ways you can spread the word about the true price we pay for palm oil and take action on behalf of Indonesia’s rainforests and all of its inhabitants.

Based on its saturated fat content and effects on blood cholesterol, several such organizations have recommended reducing consumption of palm oil. Problem is, it’s so ubiquitous in grocery stores these days that unless you strictly avoid packaged, processed and refined foods altogether, you’re consuming palm oil in at least one if not more meals per day. From soy milk to breakfast cereal, peanut butter to frozen dinners, granola bars to cookies, even in your seemingly healthier foods like whole wheat pizza crust or vegan butter spreads—palm oil has become a staple in the American diet.

So, if palm oil is already a regular ingredient in our largely unhealthy American diets, why would Dr. Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon who supposedly has our best interest at heart, be recommending we incorporate even more palm oil into our diet through the use of red palm oil?

Do you think it’s ironic that, as a doctor who specializes in treating heart and lung disease, he’d be advocating increased consumption of palm oil when the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute is saying the opposite?

What do you think—is palm oil as detrimental to our health as it is to the survival of fragile species like orangutans? And if so, why is Dr. Oz encouraging millions of his viewers around the world to give palm oil a try?

It’s not too late to help reverse the buying frenzy Dr. Oz has already inspired. Sign our petition to Dr. Oz demanding that he retract his irresponsible statements on air.

References:

1. World Health Organization. “Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases.” WHO Tech. Rep. Series 916. Geneva. 2003. P. 88.

2. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). “Choose foods low in saturated fat.” http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/chd/Tipsheets/satfat.htm, Accessed 8/25/10.

‘Health Expert’ Bryce Wylde Introducing Dr. Oz to Miracles of Palm Oil

The public controversy around “America’s Doctor” is heating up.

You may have noticed, for instance, the feature article in the most recent issue of New Yorker magazine titled “The Operator: is the most trusted doctor in America doing more harm than good?”

As we recently reported, Dr. Oz, a TV personality who advocates healthy living on his top-rated, Oprah-hyped TV show “The Dr. Oz Show,” kicked off 2013 by encouraging his millions of viewers to give palm oil a try for its “incomparable” nutritional virtues.

Problem is, he failed to mention that palm oil is a leading cause of rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction. This is unfortunate, as his ill-informed recommendation has inspired a palm oil buying frenzy.

What could have compelled Dr. Oz to blindly pronounce palm oil America’s miracle vegetable oil of 2013 without telling his viewers the whole story or offering any real science to back up his claims?

Consider this: The multi-billion dollar palm oil industry—best known for its role in rainforest destruction, species extinction and human rights abuses—has mounted an increasingly aggressive PR offensive to clean up its image, pesky facts be damned.

The cover story in the current issue of The New Yorker asks if Dr. Oz is “doing more harm than good.”

Over the past couple years the well-heeled palm oil industry has deployed it’s mafia-esque coterie of promoters, led by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) and corporate-profits-at-all-costs cheer-leader-in-chief Alan Oxley to wage a sophisticated lobbying campaign aimed at altering the negative perceptions of palm oil by re-branding the controversial commodity as sustainable, healthy, even dubbing it “nature’s gift to mankind.” Sounding familiar?

While we can’t say that Dr. Oz did what he did because he’s taking money directly from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, here are a few puzzle pieces that paint a troubling picture:

1. Bryce Wylde, the “health expert” who brought palm oil to the attention of Dr. Oz, posted a case for palm oil on his own Facebook wall—just before Dr. Oz pushed it to his audience—which was literally copied and pasted from MPOC’s PR campaign language.
2. In May 2012 MPOC hired lobbying giant Holland & Knight to challenge the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’S) science-based findings that palm-based biofuels don’t meet federal greenhouse gas standards under the renewable fuels mandate.
3. In 2011 MPOC created a TV advertisement that shamelessly promoted false statements about the virtues of palm oil to such a degree that the British Advertising Standards Authority banned it throughout the entire country.
4. Prior to MPOC’s 2011 UK ad embarrassment, in 2009, a separate magazine ad, also produced by MPOC and entitled “Palm Oil: The Green Answer,” was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) for making “allegations—hidden under a thin veneer of environmental concern—based neither on scientific evidence, nor, for that matter, on fact.”
5. Finally, consider this—Alan Oxley, MPOC’s biggest advocate, was accused by world-renowned scientists of propagating “significant distortions, misrepresentations, or misinterpretations of fact… designed to defend the credibility of corporations… directly or indirectly supporting them financially.”

Is it purely coincidence that Dr. Oz and his wingman Bryce Wylde are promoting palm oil to the American public just as MPOC’s aggressive PR campaign and financially backed lobby muscle try to influence the American public and EPA’s big decision on palm oil?

Or could it be that another embarrassing media censure is on the way like when a UK TV company was forced to suspend its relationship with the Malaysian government after broadcasting false information to millions of people around the world through programs made by a company that had received millions of pounds in payments from the government of Malaysia?

Time will tell. Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, please send Dr. Oz a letter now and ask him to correct his irresponsible statements on air.

But he hasn’t done enough. According to news reports, Dr. Oz’s enthusiastic support for red palm oil inspired a buying frenzy. We have to keep up the pressure and push Dr. Oz to correct the enormity of his error by issuing a retraction on The Dr. Oz Show.

The Dr. Oz Show currently ranks as one of the highest-rated daytime programs in recent history, so getting any response from Dr. Oz is a big success. But it’s imperative that he fill his viewers in on the disastrous environmental impact of palm oil production, which is devastating the rainforests of Indonesia and driving endangered species like the orangutan to extinction.

Can you send a message to Dr. Oz telling him to issue a correction about palm oil ON THE AIR? Even if you’ve signed this petition already, you can sign again. We’ve tweaked the language to include our demand that Dr. Oz issue a retraction on his show, not just on his little-read blog.

If you want to do even more, click on this image and share it on Facebook:

Click image to post on Facebook.

This International Business Times headline says it all: “Red Palm Oil Touted By Dr. Oz As A Diet Miracle Could Lead To ‘War On Orangutans’.”

Please sign (or re-sign) the petition to Dr. Oz now.

The invasion of orangutans that has taken Cargill’s hometown by storm to ask that Cargill stop decimating their rainforest homes has become quite controversial. The Wayzata police are still holding these orangutans, their whereabouts are still unknown, and it’s unclear whether or not police have pressed any charges.

None of the orangutans were involved in any illegal activity. They were seen carrying signs that read “Evicted by Cargill. Will work for habitat,” and “Home destroyed for palm oil. Anything helps.”

We need your help to demand justice for these political prisoners. With nowhere else to go after their homes are destroyed, endangered orangutans have resorted to taking action by protesting the destruction, ending up in jail thanks to Cargill security forces and Long Lake police.

Check out this video in which bystanders captured video footage of a stern Long Lake Police officer loading the refugee animals into the back of a squad car.

This startling orangutan invasion escalated significantly yesterday when a mother and her baby were arrested by police in downtown Wayzata. Bystanders captured video footage of a stern Long Lake Police officer loading the refugee animals into the back of a squad car (we’ll post it soon). Their whereabouts remain unknown and it is unclear at this time what, if any, charges the red apes face. Here’s a photo of the orangutan mother and her baby just before their arrest:

Here’s another photo of the orangutan mother protesting outside of Cargill HQ earlier in the day:

Prior interactions with the authorities have occurred intermittently since this small population of desperate primates relocated to the shores of Lake Minnetonka after their rainforest homes were destroyed by the expansion of palm oil plantations.

The orangutans have been seen carrying signs that read “Evicted by Cargill. Will work for habitat.” and “Home destroyed for palm oil. Anything helps.” Prior interactions with the authorities have involved allegations of loitering, hitchhiking and panhandling, but besides an altercation with private Cargill security at the company’s executive offices weeks ago, today’s arrests were the first.

Cargill is the largest importer of palm oil into the US and one of the largest traders of palm oil in the world. Critically Endangered orangutans live only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. While it is uncertain exactly how these tropical animals ended up in the frigid Midwest, their appearance follows a high profile string of public advertisements by Rainforest Action Network, including billboards, full page print ads and an online campaign calling attention to the urgent crisis of extinction orangutans face due to the wholesale destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil plantations.

Please be on alert—while orangutans pose no threat to humans, these animals are clearly desperate for their survival and unless Cargill acts quickly to make sure it stops buying palm oil that destroys their precious habitat, there is no telling what they might do next.

Harvesting Oil Palm on a Plantation in Sumatra. Photo: David Gilbert

The European Commission’s recent decision to accept palm oil as a “sustainable” transport fuel for the European Union is a huge set back for the protection of Indonesia’s remaining forests.

As our world’s forests are converted into barren commodity concessions, exacerbating the connection between dwindling rainforests & climate change, political decision makers should be doing everything in their power to keep forests standing. Instead, European leaders just endorsed a palm oil certification scheme, the RSPO, that accepts clearing of important secondary forests and peatlands, major sources of the very GHG emissions that the EC claims to be reducing.

Although the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive in theory already prohibits the destruction of forests to grow palm oil, in practice it’s a different story. Mongabay reports:

“Under the [European Commission]-approved RSPO RED scheme, a palm oil company that has both plantations that meet the EU standard as well as plantations that do not meet these standards (e.g. plantations on peat) can sell its palm oil from the eligible plantations as ‘sustainable’ biofuel to the EU and continue with business as usual on the other plantations,” said Wetlands International in a statement. “They could even expand their plantations on peatlands. This sustainability certification is therefore not helping in any way to reduce emissions, but allowing and could even encourage a pick-and-choose strategy that will enhance indirect land use change (ILUC), resulting in the continued destruction of tropical forests and peatlands.”

According to Reuters, the Commission’s own research proves that palm oil has the highest emissions of any biofuel when  ILUC factors—the indirect land use change caused by using it for fuel—are considered.

The oil palm industry causes massive emissions of greenhouse gases by driving the deforestation of tropical forests and peatlands, contributing to global climate change and biodiversity loss. Halting expansion into peatlands of any depth, which store vast amounts of carbon if left untouched but become significant greenhouse gas emitters when cleared and burned, is a climate imperative. In 2011 the Indonesian government issued a two-year moratorium on clearing forests of peat deeper than three meters deep, but this oversight fails to protect a huge percentage of peatlands in Indonesia that are less than three meters deep. Banning further expansion on all peat, regardless of depth, offers the best opportunity to drastically reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation associated with palm oil expansion.

Clearing peatlands and secondary forests is not only problematic for our global climate—it’s also driving unique species like endangered orangutans towards extinction.

The timing of this unfortunate decision is critical for many reasons. It comes just as the major global initiative that oversees the RSPO struggles to scale up its sustainability criteria. A dozen of the world’s most prestigious scientists just released a letter pleading with the RSPO to improve its Principles & Criteria, the sustainability guidelines that all RSPO members are supposed to follow.

We call on the RSPO to add two critical additional components to its Principles and Criteria during this review period:

1. A complete ban on future developments on peat.

As noted above, palm production on peatlands result in a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions (both carbon dioxide and methane). Climate change has great potential to wreak havoc on natural and human made systems alike. Therefore, it is impossible for any activity that contributes large amount of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered sustainable. Banning further expansion on peat offers the best opportunity to drastically reduce emissions from palm oil expansion.

2. A ban on future plantings on high carbon stock forests.

We applaud the current RSPO Principles and Criteria for banning the clearing of primary forests and requiring a High Conservation Value (HCV) assessment that aims to protect HCV forests. The RSPO must go further to ensure that lightly and moderately disturbed secondary forests are also protected. These forests are still very valuable both for carbon storage and for biodiversity. A carbon threshold should be established to ensure that land use change remains carbon neutral, or in cases of grassland conversion, might result in net carbon storage.

It is vital that the RSPO add these requirements the Principles and Criteria immediately to ensure that all palm oil being sold with the label “sustainable” is not driving climate change and forest destruction. Without these critical requirements, RSPO standards are not enough for businesses to rely on to meet zero deforestation and low-carbon supply chain commitments and the standards cannot be considered truly “sustainable.”

As the world’s eyes remain on the EPA, waiting to see if it will rule in favor of science and the climate or be swayed by the lobbying muscle of Indonesian and Malaysian government and industry reps, the European Commission’s decision sets a problematic precedent for countries that are trying to decrease emissions.

Aan, a 15 year old orangutan, was shot by a plantation worker after wandering into a palm plantation, a place that, although no longer familiar, used to be part of her neighborhood. She miraculously survived, earning her the title ‘badass’ by medics, but she sustained serious wounds and was left blind.

This is one of many tragic stories illustrating what has become part of orangutans’ everyday lives in Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s rainforests.

Over the last few months there has been increasing media coverage about the plight of orangutans. According to Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), it is estimated that orangutan populations have decreased by roughly 50% in the wild. In Borneo, hunters alone have killed 750 orangutans in the past year. Today, stories of orangutans being burned, killed, captured, starved, and evicted from their own habitat are not uncommon. The increasing media coverage on orangutan extinction by high profile media outlets like NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams”, CNN’s “Headline News with Jane Velez-Mitchell”, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Reuters, Huffington Post, Fox News, and the Jakarta Post all points to how important and alarming the issue is.

Perhaps the most shocking part of all this is that, as a consumer in this country, you are likely part of the reason why orangutans are on the brink of extinction. Thanks to Cargill, of course.

Palm oil is used in everything from lipstick to laundry detergent to Girl Scout cookies, meaning almost all of us are unwittingly bringing this rainforest-destroying product into our homes. Palm oil is labeled under many different names and more often than not it is hidden as a sub-ingredient you’re not likely to recognize as palm oil.

Agribusiness giants like Cargill are supplying us with these neatly packaged, palm oil-laden products. We are unwittingly driving demand for these controversial products, which feeds Cargill’s destructive business model.

Until recently, one could be forgiven for not being aware of the direct connection between the consumption of palm oil and the imminent threat of extinction facing orangutans in Indonesia and Malaysia. But for companies like Cargill at the center of this controversy, this excuse is running out.

The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the largest drivers of deforestation in Indonesia, destroying the habitat of unique tropical species as well as generating social conflict in the process. Orangutans’ homes are being transformed into acres and acres of palm oil plantations on a daily basis. To add insult to injury, plantation workers often kill orangutans as they wander into the plantations that used to be their homes. They are considered to be pests that damage the oil palm plants and plantation workers disturbingly deal with them by shooting them down.

Orangutans’ homes are being destroyed, as is their source of food and way of life. Yet when they are left wandering to look for a new home, it seems like they are being punished for it.

We can help change the stark reality orangutans currently face. We’ve come up with a partial list of the different names of palm oil that can be found on labels at the supermarket for you to avoid. But that isn’t enough. That’s why we are continuing to challenge Cargill, the largest American trader of palm oil, with our hard-hitting campaigns to stop the company from supplying our supermarkets with rainforest destruction. Cargill must adopt palm oil supply chain safeguards to guarantee that the palm oil it supplies and trades is not linked to deforestation, social conflict and species extinction.

But Cargill won’t do the right thing on its own accord, so please join us.

A Duta Palma-owned palm oil plantation in Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan). Until Cargill adopts supply chain safeguards and publicly discloses its supposed 'No Trade List,' this rainforest destruction will persist in its palm oil supply chain. Photo: David Gilbert

Last week, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) contacted Cargill employees in over 20 countries to alert them to the company’s ties to rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction. The email urged employees to watch a recent eye-opening prime time NBC news story profiling the imminent extinction of orangutans due to unchecked palm oil expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Palm oil is one of the leading causes of tropical deforestation and Cargill is the top importer of palm oil into the US as well as one of the largest palm oil traders worldwide.

Cargill responded to our email by issuing a company-wide statement to its employees that contains numerous specific allegations that are either overtly disingenuous or flat out untrue. So, RAN issued a response to set the record straight. And we sent it to the same Cargill employees across 20 countries to ensure that, even though Cargill is not telling them the whole truth, they aren’t kept in the dark by their company’s lies.

Less than 24 hours later, UPI picked up the story: “Rainforest group locks horns with Cargill.”

Here is our statement below. Please let Cargill know what you think in the comments section.

Which brings me back to the lack of controversy. By the final day of the conference, I was tempted to tweet the phrase “Palm oil industry meets in air conditioned building, congratulates itself” as the take-home message from the whole event. But then, a well-spoken man rose during the final plenary and asked a representative of Cargill, who manages one of the companies’ plantations, “How long does Cargill intend to support smallholders?” A hush fell over the room, and the Cargill representative hesitated, and then answered a completely different question, at length. Huh.

Later on that day, Lindsey Allen, RAN’s Forest Program Director, explained to me that there was a world of controversy behind that simple question. Cargill, and other RSPO member companies like it, purchase palm oil from groups of smallholders who essentially hand over the rights to the produce from their land in return for a guaranteed market for their palm fruits. As part of the RSPO certification process, the companies pay the smallholders a premium for their crop, approximately 50% of the premium that the company itself receives in the consumer market. The company then turns around and charges the smallholders a fee for upkeep of the roads to the plantations, to the schools and for chemical inputs like fertilizer and pesticide.

But here’s the catch: when the palm fruit are mature, the farm workers harvest them by using long sticks with curved saws at the end to bring them down from the top of the trees. This works just fine until the palm trees are about 25 years old. At which point, the saws simply can’t be made long enough to reach the fruit. So, instead of building ladders (or creating some other equally high tech solution), the company simply pulls up all the palm trees and replants the plantation with baby trees.  Right away that sounds wasteful to me, but waste isn’t even the biggest issue. The problem is that immature palm trees take about 5 to 7 years to bear fruit. So, all these smallholders have a 5 to 7 year gap in income to contend with. And not only that, but during that time they are still expected to pay the company upkeep of the roads, infrastructure and any other necessary maintenance. Which is tricky, since during that time….they don’t have an income.

The question the eloquent gentleman was asking during the RSPO meeting was essentially “what is Cargill’s plan?” And the reason that the Cargill representative avoided the question is because quite simply, they don’t yet have an answer. And neither do any of the other companies, despite ongoing requests from smallholders and NGO’s. Without alternate plans, smallholders will inevitably go into debt to pay for general maintenance during the ‘fallow’ years when the new plantation is maturing, leaving them with crippling bills that could translate into life-long debt bondage to the company. Cargill would probably protest that this is an inaccurate picture of their business practices, and perhaps it is. But the simple fact that they are not willing or able to make public an alternative scenario puts the burden of proof squarely on them. I learned later that there is a working group at the RSPO struggling to address this issue, and that in and of itself is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. But until there is a result, I take the side of the smallholders. The Secretary General of the RSPO, closed the final plenary saying that there were three key questions:

•  Is the RSPO good for people?
• Is the RSPO good for the planet?
• Is the RSPO good for profits?

After attending the meeting and observing the progress made over the past ten years to develop the RSPO standard, it is my view that the RSPO may be good for profits, but still falls well short of being good for people and the planet.

It seems these distraught red apes have descended on the small, affluent town of Wayzata to protest what they say is the destruction of their rainforest habitat for palm oil by Cargill.

The first of the forlorn primates appeared last week just before dawn on a local park bench on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, holding a sign that read “Home Destroyed for Palm Oil. Anything Helps.” Within minutes of sitting down, an upset passerby, apparently a Cargill employee, jumped out of her SUV and assaulted the peaceful orangutan, removing her sign and leaving her alone in the cold autumn air.

A few days later another of the great apes appeared on a busy public square in Wayzata carrying a sign reading “Evicted by Cargill. Will work for habitat.” This animal was more warmly received and he sat peacefully for hours as hundreds of people commented and interacted with him amicably.

The latest sighting was early in the morning this past Monday when a bundled-up orangutan was spotted hitchhiking near the entrance to Cargill’s headquarters in the town of Minnetonka. After hundreds of Cargill employees drove slowly past the hitchhiking protestor as they arrived to work, a team of Cargill private security officers arrived on the scene. The security team interrogated the orangutan for several tense minutes before rudely pinching his side and then picking him up and loading him into the back of their patrol vehicle. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

While it is unclear exactly how these tropical animals ended up in the frigid Midwest, their appearance follows a high profile string of public advertisements by Rainforest Action Network, including billboards, full page print ads and an online campaign calling attention to the urgent crisis of extinction orangutans face due to the wholesale destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil plantations.

Cargill is the largest importer of palm oil into the US and one can only guess these intelligent creatures came to Cargill’s doorstep in a last ditch effort to save their kind before it is forever too late.

Please be on alert—while orangutans pose no threat to humans, these animals are clearly desperate for their survival and unless Cargill acts quickly to make sure it stops buying palm oil that destroys their precious habitat, there is no telling what they might do next.

Rainforest Action Network helped with the behind the scenes legwork to get this important program on the air. Now we need to maximize its impact by ensuring as many people see it as possible. Please watch the show today (below) and then share it with your friends and family using the social media buttons above.

It is because of the tireless efforts of RAN supporters and activists that the destruction of the Tripa forest first gained an international spotlight. The response to our call to action, combined with media coverage about the decimation of what had been the densest population of orangutans left in the world, led the President of Indonesia to dispatch a team of investigators to the scene.

What happened next was historic. In a country with a dismal record of enforcing its own laws when it comes to protecting forests, the investigators declared that the clearing was indeed illegal and the operating permit for the main company responsible was revoked.

It is more important than ever that the eyes of the world remain focused on the threats facing Indonesia’s orangutans so that enforcement becomes the norm and not the exception.

Let’s ensure this NBC piece has the farthest reach of any coverage the orangutan crisis has received yet. Please help us by watching and sharing this video widely.

Supporters of Rainforest Action Network joined with members of Rainforest Relief and Global Justice for Animals and Ecology to greet the CEOs and CFOs from Indonesia’s biggest banks—e.g. Mandiri Bank, Bank Republic of Indonesia, Bank Central Asia—as well as executives from palm oil (big ag), coal, oil and gas, steel, telecommunications and pulp and paper companies as they hobnobbed with US  institutional investors trying to make deals.

The demonstration was organized to send a clear warning to potential investors to be aware of the major risks involved and avoid putting their money into companies with track records of deforestation and social conflict. Some of the world’s most notorious forest destroying companies dominate Indonesia’s paper and palm oil industries in particular and are responsible for widespread human rights abuses.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono gave a morning speech at the New York Stock Exchange and then gathered with US bankers and Indonesia’s business elite at the upscale Conrad Hotel for an event called “Indonesia Investment Day.”

A protester dressed as a critically endangered Sumatran tiger singled out logging giants Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and APRIL for their role in “double defaulting” on investors to the combined sum of over $17 billion. APP is still in gross violation of its legally binding “Master Restructuring Agreement with forest conservation commitments made to western financial institutions and Export Credit Agencies.

Scientists estimate there are less than 400 Sumatran tigers remaining in the wild and habitat destruction by the pulp and paper industry is a primary cause of their decline.

Other protestors held placards that read “Development without Deforestation!” and “You can’t Hedge Extinction.”

Cargill: Keep Corporate Influence Out of Science!

Two weeks ago, the mainstream media caught fire with a Stanford study questioning the benefits of organic foods. It turns out the anti-organics study may have the fingerprints of agribusiness giants Cargill and Monsanto. That’s right, Big Ag has been bankrolling Stanford’s Food Security and the Environment (FSE) program. In fact, Cargill donated $5 million to Stanford over a 10 year period. According to Cargill’s own website, the agri-giant has established a 25-year partnership with Stanford to conduct “research, teaching, and outreach” as part of the program.

Do you think it is a coincidence that the first big study to undermine the benefits of organics has links to Cargill?

We need to tell Cargill: ENOUGH. Corporate money should not sway science.

Whether it be for elections or our research institutions, corporate money comes with an expectation of influence. When a company like Cargill donates millions of dollars—it is likely expecting something in return.

It’s time to get Cargill out of our food supply. A big part of that is getting the company to stop influencing crucial food research for its own agenda.

Sign our petition TODAY to protect our food supply and tell Cargill that you want corporate influence out of science and research.

This story has blown up on the blogosphere, but Cargill is counting on this PR disaster blowing over. We think this is a crucial part of the Stanford study that needs to be told, and we need your help to do that.

Please sign the petition to let Cargill know that you want its influence out of our food supply. After you sign, please take a moment to share this petition with your friends and family. It will take all of us to counter Cargill’s heavy weight.

Photo: David Gilbert

UPDATE, 9.26.12: 

BREAKING: Within the next 24 hours, Kallista Alam, 1 of the 5 major palm oil companies operating in Tripa, will have their operating permit WITHDRAWN.

This is a highly important precedent-setting case, as this is the first in Aceh’s (Sumatra, Indonesia) entire governmental history.

RAN members like you have helped to keep the pressure on the Indonesian government to hold palm oil companies accountable for their massive deforestation.

This imminent historic decision sends a strong message to the palm oil & pulp industry that the status quo of operating illegally with impunity will no longer be tolerated as business as usual. It is CRUCIAL now to keep the international spotlight on other instances of rainforest destruction and human rights abuses so this milestone case becomes a pattern and not an anomaly.

****************************************************

In a huge turn of events last week and a massive step in the right direction for the Tripa peat forest of Sumatra, the Administrative High Court of Medan has commanded the Governor of Aceh to withdraw the permit of palm oil company PT Kallista Alam.

This is the very same palm oil company that played a role in the tragic illegal burning of the Tripa rainforest last Spring, which threatened this delicate peat swamp, home to the highest population density of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan anywhere on Earth.

PT Kallista Alam’s permit was originally issued by former Governor Yusuf in August 2011 to allow 1,605 hectares (just under 4,000 acres) of deep peat in the Tripa forest to be converted into oil palm plantations. The permit was issued despite the fact that the area of Tripa covered by the permit is protected by national laws that prevent any development that causes environmental degradation or destruction. A police report was filed by the local community to the National Police in Jakarta, and Indonesian environmental group WALHI sought legal justice by filing a case against Governor Yusuf and PT Kallista Alam for the illegal expansion into the Tripa forest.

Photo: Carlos Qulies

But the story only thickens from there. This past March, hundreds of fires raged through the Tripa peat swamp as palm oil companies rushed to clear the forest before the verdict was announced—with none other than PT Kallista Alam leading the pack. To the dismay of environmentalists and orangutan lovers alike, the Indonesian court decided to throw out the case and WALHI filed for an appeal. RAN and Tripa supporters from all around the world sent thousands of emails, faxes, letters and petitions to the Indonesian government, and Tripa became the subject of a National Police investigation into the crimes and illegal burning by the expanding oil palm plantations.

That brings us to today. Since the appeal was filed, the world has witnessed continued burning of Tripa— fires so bad that they created a regional air quality crisis and made the extinction of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan a more imminent reality.

The High Court’s decision to grant the appeal and its order to the Governor of Aceh to withdraw PT Kallista Alam’s permit is not just an achievement for WALHI, but also a victory for the communities of Aceh and the hundreds of national and international groups concerned with the conservation of Tripa. This decision sets a new precedent that law enforcement is key for the protection of Indonesia’s forests. WALHI expects this may be the beginning of “momentum of law enforcement in a broader sense” concering environmental issues in Indonesia.

Photo: Carlos Quiles

But this is not the end of the road for saving the threatened rainforests of Tripa. Rather, it’s only a small step in the right direction. Now it’s up to Governor Zaini Abdullah to follow through with his instructions and cancel PT Kallista Allam’s permit. Beyond revoking the permit, other necessary action is needed by the courts in order to protect Tripa: evaluate the licenses of the other palm oil companies operating illegally and revoke any permits in violation of legal procedure, and punish the guilty parties who issued any illegal permits. Tripa is an important test case to see if Indonesian Police and Government really can uphold the law—the survival of Tripa depends on it.

This small but meaningful win for Tripa was made possible with the help of the thousands of people worldwide who took actions to put a spotlight on Tripa and created international pressure to save this peatland. There’s still a long road ahead, but we will continue to call for support and together we can continue to gain significant victories towards saving Tripa once and for all.

What the hell is the TPP, you may ask? While it is among the largest and potentially most important ‘free trade’ agreements the world has ever seen, one can hardly be blamed for not being familiar with it yet. The corporate cabal behind it, including names like Cargill, Pfizer, Nike and WalMart, has done an exceptional job of maintaining an almost total lack of transparency as they literally design the future we will all inhabit.

While 600 corporate lobbyists have been granted access and input on the draft texts from the beginning, even high-ranking members of Congress have been denied access to the most basic content of what US negotiators are proposing in our names.

Demand transparency now! Write to US trade representative Ron Kirk and lead Cargil trade lobbyist Devry Boughner to demand they make the text public.

Thankfully, draft texts of the proposal have appeared on Wikileaks and the website of Citizen’s Trade Campaign. It is difficult to overstate the potential implications on the lives of people around the world if anything like the agreement in these leaked documents were to be implemented with the force of law.

The TPP is called a ‘trade agreement,’ but in actuality it is a long-dreamed-of template for implementing a binding system of global corporate governance as bold as anything the world’s wealthiest elite has attempted before. Of the 26 chapters under negotiation, only a few have to do directly with trade. The other chapters enshrine new rights and privileges for major corporations while weakening the power of nation states to oppose them. The TPP essentially proposes to establish a parallel system of justice where companies can sue countries in a tribunal of judges composed of unaccountable international trade lawyers with little to no process for appeal.

This wild bastardization of the concept of justice endangers everything from affordable medicines, internet freedoms and intellectual property rights to democratically enacted labor laws and environmental protections. And that’s not to mention the massive outsourcing of middle class jobs from the US to countries like Vietnam and Brunei.

This isn’t just a bad trade agreement, it’s a wish list of the 1%—a worldwide corporate power grab of enormous proportions.

This week, in an empty warehouse on the outskirts of downtown Baltimore, a group of activists from around the US gathered to plan a spirited week of resistance to the TPP. Finally, after three years of secret negotiations, the momentum of an opposition movement is building. On Sunday, a diverse and raucous crowd of a couple hundred people descended on this exclusive golf resort to demand their voices be heard, chanting after each speaker: “Flush the TPP!”

NAFTA was the last straw that sent the Zapatistas into armed rebellion. The WTO negotiations spawned a robust and global anti-globalization movement the likes of which the world had never seen. Even after 9/11, the FTAA elicited a pushback of people power that even a fully militarized Miami police force could not completely suppress.

But near as I can tell, even though the TPP is bigger, bolder and badder than any trade agreement before it, the small group gathered this week on a grassy hillside in rural Virginia is the backbone of resistance to the TPP today.

The elements are there: a diverse coalition of wonky NGOs, social justice and trade policy experts, urban anarchists, Occupiers and suburban activists painting banners and scheming pranks—labor leaders, environmental groups and representatives from Mexico, Peru and beyond, but the scale is so far totally out of proportion to the threat we’re facing.

But this is beginning to change. Speakers at Sunday’s rally included key labor leaders from the Teamsters, and the Communications Workers of America joined with the leaders of environmental groups from the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Rainforest Action Network.

The TPP was conceived under the second Bush administration, but it has been embraced and nurtured into maturity under Obama’s watch. The widespread belief among people here opposing it is that the current Administration is in a race to finish much of the negotiations while they can bank on the fact that labor leaders and environmental and human rights advocates will shy away from challenging a democratic president in an election year. Free trade agreements are particularly unpopular in the key swing states Obama needs to win this election—making right now a crucial moment of opportunity to pull the TPP out of the shadows and leverage our combined political power to kill it before it takes root any deeper.

Stay tuned, one way or another history will be made in the coming months and the outcome will forever influence how our communities and countries relate to each other in an ever-shrinking world.

Flush the TPP!

For more background and details on the TPP negotiations and content, click here.

Right now, negotiations for the TPP are being conducted in secret. The corporate lobbyists pushing for this agreement include a who’s who list of Big Oil, Big Ag and Wall Street power brokers. Our country’s negotiators have granted approximately 600 of these corporate lobbyists access to the negotiating texts while flatly refusing to show the agreement to the public. Even members of Congress are left in the dark on the actual contents of the agreement.

Send a loud and clear message to the lead U.S. trade negotiator, Ron Kirk, that we don’t want this trade agreement passed in our names. He needs to know we’re watching.

Among the corporations pushing hardest for this agreement is none other than Cargill, the leading importer of forest-destroying palm oil into the United States. If the TPP is successful, Cargill will be able to export Malaysian palm oil tariff-free to the 11 partner nations involved in the agreement.

Let’s show Cargill’s corporate lobbyists and the US trade negotiators that we will not stand quietly by while this massive anti-environment trade agreement is passed.

At the behest of companies like Cargill, U.S. trade negotiators are pushing hard for the Trans-Pacific Partnership to include so-called “investor-state” provisions that would grant transnational corporations the power to challenge virtually any environmental law, regulation or court decision that negatively affects their expectation of profits.

As you know, current trade rules have helped cement unsustainable production and consumption patterns worldwide. These rules have allowed companies to move operations to wherever labor and environmental standards are the weakest, wreaking havoc on forests, communities and the climate. Every country that will be part of the TPP is home to tropical rainforests or other endangered forest ecosystems that we need to be protecting, not exploiting.

There is still a chance to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but time is running out. Send a message to stop this trade agreement today. We’ll hand-deliver all of your messages to US trade representatives, as well.

We must learn our lessons from the failed trade agreements of the past and stake out a different course for the future, where peoples’ lives and livelihoods are protected. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is going in the wrong direction at a time when we must strengthen environmental protections, not facilitate a race to the bottom in environmental deregulation.