PalmHugger Calls for "Buy Australian Last" Policy

Online, October 16, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Australian Independent Senator Nick Xenophon, has introduced legislation to Parliament that would make it compulsory for manufacturers to list palm oil as a specific ingredient if it has been used in their food, or to make the food.

The average Australian consumes about 10 kilograms of palm oil every year without even knowing it, Senator Xenophon alleges.

Food labelling laws allow palm oil to be listed as "vegetable oil" on packaging even though it is a fruit, and is high in saturated fat, which increases the risk of heart disease, he said.

Xenophon also alleges that palm oil production results in extensive deforestation. Identifying the major producers as Malaysia and Indonesia, Xenophone claims this has led to the removal of wildlife habitat and has placed many species, including the endangered Orang-utan at risk of extinction, as early as 2013.

Debate on the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling - Palm Oil) Bill 2010 was adjourned.

Xenophon's actions against palm oil is reminiscent of the campaigns carried out in the early 1980s against palm oil by the now discredited Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Philip Sokolof's American Heart Savers Association (AHSA) on the grounds that palm oil was high in saturated fat and therefore deleterious to heart health. What CSPI and AHSA failed to highlight was that palm oil contains an equal proportion of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids with about 44% palmitic acid, 5% stearic acid (both saturated), 40% oleic acid (monounsaturated), 10% linoleic acid and 0.4% alpha linoleic acid (both polyunsaturated).

So palm oil is, in truth not the highly saturated fat that its critics try to make it out to be. Further the saturated fats in palm oil have very different properties from the saturated fats found in animal sources that its critics try to equate it to. It has been established for some time that the saturated fatty acids in the sn-1 and the -3 position (found in palm oil) can have very different biological consequences than animal fats such as milk fats and lard, in which the saturated fats are found primarily in the sn-2 position. (Vide: Donald J. McNamara, PhD: "Palm Oil and Heart Health: A case of Manipulated Perception an d Misuse of Science" 240S Vol 29 No. 3(s) Journal of the American College of Nutrition)

When a plethora of scientific research began appearing in peer reviewed journals establishing that palm oil was, in fact, a heart friendly oil that lowers LDL cholesterol and increases the health healthy HDL cholesterol, both CSPI and AHSA beat a hasty retreat.

In the view of the Inc Society of Palmhuggers, before Xenophon should attempt to lecture Indonesia and Malaysia on orang utan conservation, he should take a look at his own country's conservation record.

According to Australian Wildlife Conservancy, "Australia has the worst mammal extinction record in the world - 27 mammals have become extinct in the last 200 years. No other country or continent has such a tragic record of mammal extinctions"! The long list includes mammals such as the Tasmanian tiger, the western koala and the desert rat kangaroos and birds such as the paradise parrot, the Haast's eagle and the Tasmanian emu!

In addition, out of Australia's surviving biodiversity, "more than 1,500 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and plants are listed as threatened with extinction under federal legislation. The Federal Government has also identified 3,000 ecosystems facing extinction" (Vide:Terrestrial Biodiversity Amendment)

A recent report by James M. Roberts, Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth in The Heritage Foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics in an incisive analysis of Greenpeace's intransigence towards palm oil, serves as a stunning indictment and striking rebuke for Xenophon and his disingenuous anti-palm oil campaigns!

Says Roberts: "Greenpeace willfully ignores some inconvenient, yet vitally important facts." For instance, Roberts notes: "For starters, palm oil is environmentally friendly. On a per-liter basis, palm oil production requires less energy and land-and fewer fertilizers or pesticides-than other vegetable oils."

"What's more, Indonesia and Malaysia--both major palm oil and paper producers--have put 25 percent and 50 percent of their forest cover, respectively, off limits to development and established extensive wildlife protection efforts. In other words, both nations are being socially responsible," said Roberts.

Palm oil is so efficient in land use that a hectare planted can yield from 4-5 metric tons of edible oil, which is close to 10 times that of its nearest competitor. This explains why the relatively tiny country of Malaysia could be the world's largest producer of palm oil for over a hundred years. Despite cultivating palm oil for more than a century, according to the FAO, Malaysia still retains forest cover 60.8% (Vide: FAO. Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2000. Part 1. Forest Cover.) which dwarfs the forest cover of Australia.

In 2005, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released its 2005 Global Forest Resources Assessment, a regular report on the status world's forest resources. In the report, FAO reported that Nigeria has the world's highest deforestation rate whilst for Asia, Vietnam lost the most forest cover, a staggering 51% of its primary forests between 2000 and 2005, while Cambodia lost 29% of its primary forests between 2000 and 2005 and not Indonesia and Malaysia as Xenophon insinuates.(Vide: FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 Part 1 Forest Cover)

A new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America gives details of worldwide deforestation and shows that over one million square kilometers of forest were chopped down worldwide from 2000-2005. One of the most interesting findings from this study, however, was that although Brazil had the highest total amount of it forests (rainforest and tropical dry forest) cleared, the US and Canada had much higher percentages of their forests lost.

Brazil lost about 165,000 square kilometers of forest from 2000-2005 (3.6% of its total forest cover from the start of that time period), whereas the US and Canada, respectively, lost 120,000 and 160,000 square kilometers in that time period (6.0% and 5.2% of their total forest cover). The average forest cover loss worldwide for that time period was 3.5%. The US had the highest percentage of its forest cover lost of the seven nations containing over one million square kilometers of forest.(Vide: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2010)

The Inc Society of Palmhuggers notes that of the many conservation programs and orang utan enclaves established by Malaysia and Indonesia, the Tabin Wildlife Reserve stands out. The 120,000 hectares set aside in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve itself is almost twice the size of the island nation of Singapore!

With orangutan in the wild population in Borneo alone currently estimated at between 45,000 and 69,000, it behooves one to ask just how is it even remotely possible for the orang utan, by any leap of logic or stretch of imagination, to go extinct within 3 years.

Further, the recent discovery of 2,000 plus new orang utans living in the rainforests in the rugged mountains of Indonesian Borneo, which could possibly add 5 % to the known orangutan population is more egg on the faces of alarmists such as Xenophon.

So what's the real driver behind the anti-palm oil campaigns led by the likes of Senator Xenophon? Roberts offers a clue: "First, let's consider Europe's vegetable oil producers, timber producers and paper manufacturers. They don't much like competition from the Asian market!" The Inc. Society of Palmhuggers is compelled to ask: "Is Xenophon a proxy in a well disguised trade war against palm oil?"

In the circumstances, if the Australian Parliament passes the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling - Palm Oil) Bill 2010 to discriminate against palm oil in violation of WTO rules, the Incorporated Society of Palmhuggers calls for both Indonesia and Malaysia to adopt a "Buy Australian Last" policy in response.