Your Supermarket is Selling Rainforest Destruction! Get the Facts On Palm Oil and the US Snack Food Industry.

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 [...]

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Why ‘RSPO Sustainable Palm Oil’ is not responsible

When you go to the grocery store and you buy a bag of chips, a chocolate bar, crackers, ice-cream, doughnuts, frozen snacks or other candy, you may see a label on the products saying ‘RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil’ or ‘Green Palm Sustainability.’ Such labeling makes it is easy to think that the product you [...]

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EU Commission Gives Increasingly Controversial Palm Oil Green Stamp

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 [...]

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RAN Issues Statement in Response to False Palm Oil Claims by Cargill

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 [...]

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Big Questions Remain after Palm Oil Summit

After two days at the tenth annual meeting of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), I had just about given up on hearing anything controversial. The RSPO is a multi-stakeholder group and process that aims to, in its own words, “transform the palm oil sector” by establishing a certification for palm oil that is [...]

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How Cargill is Saving Humanity… and the World

If you made $5 billion clearing a community’s forest and community food garden, polluted and drained their rivers, but gave them a tree and a bucket of clean water in return, would you feel justified saying you’re building healthy communities, preserving rivers and reducing deforestation? Would you pat yourself on the back? Maybe not, but [...]

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Cargill Needs to Come Clean: Demand Transparency

With palm oil in half of all products for sale in US grocery stores, we have the right to know the true cost of its production. Cargill is the #1 importer of palm oil into the US, but the company refuses to be transparent about who it does business with. For instance: Is Cargill still [...]

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How To Avert An RSPO Collapse

The latest development within the RSPO could be debilitating to its mission. This past November, a delegation from Rainforest Action Network (RAN) attended the ninth annual Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) meeting in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. Unfortunately, not enough RSPO members attended the last RSPO meeting to meet quorum so its annual General Assembly [...]

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From The Field: Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park And The High Stakes Of The Palm Oil Crisis

Since joining RAN’s forest program over two years ago, I have read and written about the many dire consequences of industrial scale palm oil plantations in Indonesia: one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, critical habitat for endangered species like orangutans destroyed, gross human rights abuses and labor conditions, and social conflict between [...]

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RAN Staff Finds Deforestation And Violence For Palm Oil Unchecked By The RSPO

As the 9thAnnual Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) meeting wrapped up on the island of Borneo, the crisis stemming from the uncontrolled expansion of palm oil plantations into rainforests and communities reached a fever pitch. Consider this: In the few days that RAN’s four staff-member delegation attended the RSPO meeting in SE Asia, the [...]

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