Palmhugger Supports The Australian Food And Grocery Council's Opposition To Palm Oil Labeling Bill

Online, April 18, 2011 (Newswire.com) - The Inc. Society of Palmhuggers expresses its support of The Australian Food and Grocery Council's stance in opposing Nick Xenophon's private member's bill for a health warning to go on food products that contain palm oil.

Apart from it being a clear abuse and violation of the spirit of food labeling laws for environmental lobbying purposes, such a law threatens the diminution of far more essential health and safety warnings on food labels which would be put in jeopardy, compromised or diluted.

Evidence has been emerging in recent months that palm oil has been targeted, not for its perceived role in deforestation or threatening the extinction of exotic animals like the orang utan but on account of its extreme competitiveness as a result of its inherent high yielding characteristics.

For instance, palm oil cultivation occupies just a mere 0.22% of the world's agricultural lands and yet, incredibly produces a staggering 30% of the world's supply of edible oil.

In the view of Palmhugger.org, it is probably this incredible productivity which is close to ten times that of soy and also rapeseed and sunflower (both indigenous to the EU) which has led to these desperate campaigns against it.

Says James M Roberts, Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth in The Heritage Foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics: "... in pressing its cause, Greenpeace willfully ignores some inconvenient, yet vitally important facts. 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."

So what's the real driver behind the anti-development campaigns led by European green groups? First, let's consider Europe's vegetable oil producers, timber producers and paper manufacturers. They don't much like competition from the Asian market.

European policymakers know protectionism is illegal, so they are trying to block imports on environmental and public relations grounds. EU member states support radical green groups which then demonize trade in foreign goods. What European policymakers and companies can't do legally in global trade courts they are trying to accomplish instead via the court of public opinion.

Governmental funding for campaigns against palm oil is nothing new. In 2005, the inappropriately named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) published a "report" called "Cruel Oil: How palm oil harms health, rainforest and wildlife" in which they made wild and unsubstantiated claims that palm oil cultivation was causing massive deforestation and threatening the extinction of biodiversity such as the orang utan.

The report was prepared with the assistance of Aid Environment listed as partners with Hivos - a Netherlands based civil society group with direct links to campaigns in Indonesia. Hivos, in turn, is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for up to two-thirds of its annual 100m Euro budget.

What is, perhaps, the most sinister aspect of Greenpeace and FOE's agitation against palm oil is the recent revelation by researchers Caroline Boin and Andrea Marchesetti in a well researched report entitled "Friends of the EU."
(Vide: http://www.policynetwork.net/accountability/publication/friends-eu).

This damning report is a clear expose that the EU, through its environmental ministries and commissions is involved in funding up to 70% of the operating budgets of environmental NGOs such as FOE Europe. This is a dead giveaway that the real reasons for these baffling attacks is to protect oilseed crops like rapeseed and sunflower which are indigenous to the EU. It is inarguable that these EU oilseeds would find it difficult to compete on a level playing field, with "the cheapest oilseed crop in the world" especially in the production of biofuel, the use of which the EU has committed itself to promoting!

In the view of Palmhugger.org, it cannot be disputed that the source of funding for these green groups to carry out their nefarious attacks against palm oil is coming from governments and governmental agencies in an effort to aid their feeble edible oil industries who are otherwise unable to compete on a level playing field with palm oil?

The possibility arises that Xenophon himself is the beneficiary of the largesse of anti-palm oil lobbies desperate to stop the growth of the world's cheapest cooking oil.

Palmhugger.org thus calls, in the interest of transparency and good governance, for Nick Xenophon to open his bank accounts for public scrutiny to prove that he is not mercenary lobbyist or a hired gun, paid to submit this bill to Parliament.