Europe’s food makers find green palm oil hard to stomach
KUALA LUMPUR: Europe, the world’s second-biggest buyer of palm oil, is set to miss a 2020 target backed by about 10 countries, as well as big companies, to use 100percent sustainable supplies of the edible oil in food ingredients, environmental experts warn.
A lack of public awareness and debate around the palm oil industry has left nations like Italy, Spain and Poland lagging behind their neighbors in green palm oil purchases, a January report by The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) said.
“Countries in northwestern Europe are leading the pack,” said Daan Wensing, a director at IDH, a Netherlands-based nonprofit. “Other major destinations are just getting started.”
In addition to a lack of government action to force buyers to purchase sustainable palm oil, Wensing said European catering firms and animal feed companies are not coming under consumer pressure to source greener supplies.
“The industries that are consumer-facing have stepped up, but sectors like canteen catering services are not really playing ball yet,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As the world’s most widely used edible oil, palm oil is found in everything from margarine to biscuits and soap to soups, as well as in biofuel.
But in recent years, the industry has come under close scrutiny from green activists and consumers, who have blamed it for clearing forests for plantations and causing fires, along with the exploitation of workers.
In response, about 10 European governments – including France, the Netherlands and Britain - and major corporate buyers of palm oil like Nestle, Mondelez, PepsiCo and Unilever pledged to purchase only sustainable palm oil by 2020.
The European Union has also approved a law to phase out palm oil-based biofuels by 2030, causing outrage in top producer nations Indonesia and Malaysia.