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    Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders
    Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders
    Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders
    Ebook176 pages1 hour

    Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders

    By Linda Everett

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    About this ebook

    This book is the first to examine the battle for public opinion that palm oil faced from the days of Phil Sokolof’s American Heart Association (AHA) in the late eighties and the curiously named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) right up to the present day Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and will analyze how the tables were turned on them.

    What was uncovered in the process of battling the formidable forces arraigned against palm oil was, shocking even to us, to say the least, when we finally managed to peel away the mask and discover the true identities of the organizations which provided the funding and virtually helped orchestrate and plan these dubious campaigns against palm oil! What were the motivations and real reasons for millions of dollars to be committed to these campaigns? The answer will shock most readers for this powerful adversary hides behind a façade of respectability and sanctimony.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781483531823
    Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders

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      Book preview

      Environmental Fraud - Linda Everett

      foul!

      PART 1

      1

      HISTORY OF PALM OIL

      Found growing wild in West Africa, palm oil has been consumed for over 5,000 years. It flourishes in the humid tropics in groves of varying density, mainly in the coastal belt between 10 degrees north latitude and 10 degrees south latitude. It is also found up to 20 degrees south latitude in Central and East Africa and Madagascar in isolated localities with a suitable rainfall. It grows on relatively open ground and, therefore, originally spread along the banks of rivers and later on land cleared by humans for long-fallow cultivation¹.

      The palm fruit develops in dense bunches weighing 10 kilograms (kg) or more and containing more than a thousand individual fruits similar in size to a small plum. Palm oil is obtained from the flesh of the fruit and probably formed part of the food supply of the indigenous populations long before recorded history. It may also have been traded overland, since archaeological evidence indicates that palm oil was most likely available in ancient Egypt. The excavation of an early tomb at Abydos, dated to 3000 B.C., yielded a mass of several kilograms still in the shape of the vessel which contained it².

      A sample of the tomb material was submitted to careful chemical analysis and found to consist mainly of palmitic acid, glycerol in the combined and free state and a mixture of azelaic and pimelic acids. The latter compounds are normal oxidation products of fatty acids, and the analyst concluded that the original material was probably palm oil, partly hydrolyzed and oxidized during its long storage. In view of the rather large quantity found, the oil was probably intended for dietary purposes rather than as an unguent.

      A few written records of the local food use of palm oil (presumably from Elaeis guineensis) are available in accounts of European travelers to West Africa from the middle of the fifteenth century. Red palm oil later became an important item in the provisioning trade supplying the caravans and ships of the Atlantic slave trade, and it still remains a popular foodstuff among people of African descent in the Bahia region of Brazil³.

      The British Industrial Revolution created a demand for palm oil for candle making and as a lubricant for machinery. In the early nineteenth century, West African farmers began to supply a modest export trade, as well as producing palm oil for their own food needs. After 1900, European-run plantations were established in Central Africa and Southeast Asia, and the world trade in palm oil continued to grow slowly; reaching a level of 250,000 tons (metric tons) per annum by 1930⁴.

      Meanwhile, the invention of the hydrogenation process for oils and fats in 1902 created the possibility of Western employment of palm products as, for example, in the making of margarine. Yet hydrogenation was more useful for liquid oils like groundnut, palm kernel, and coconut oils than for palm oil. After World War II, further improvements in palm oil refining technology and transport methods made it possible to use largely un-hydrogenated palm oil in Western food products⁵.

      A rapid expansion of the palm oil export trade followed, accompanied by a marked growth in the plantation sector of production. Between 1962 and 1982, world exports of palm oil rose from about 500,000 to 2,400,000 metric tons per annum, and Malaysia emerged as the world’s largest producer, accounting for 56% of world production and 85% of world exports in 1982. Expanded production in Malaysia was achieved mainly by the privately owned estate sector, which increased its oil palm holdings more than tenfold in the 1960s and 1970s; and by the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA), whose large-scale schemes organized oil production along plantation lines, although ownership was vested in the workforce of smallholders⁶.

      By 1990, world production had reached nearly 11,000,000 metric tons per annum, with a worldwide trade of 8,500,000 tons⁷. Although red palm oil is still used in soups and baked dishes in West Africa, elsewhere in the world, palm oil is eaten mainly in a highly refined form. Its food uses vary from the vanaspati and ghee of India to the margarine, cooking oils, and biscuits of Europe and the United States⁸.

      South East Asia

      The oil palm was first introduced to Southeast Asia in 1848, when four seedlings, originating from West Africa, were planted in the botanical gardens at Buitenzorg (now Bogor) in Java⁹. But this introduction did not lead to a plantation industry for some time, although offspring of the palms were used as ornamentals by tobacco planters.

      In 1905, a Belgian agricultural engineer, Adrien Hallet, arrived in Sumatra and noticed that its palms grew more quickly and bore a richer fruit than their counterparts in Congo, where he had previously worked. Just as the oil palms in southeastern Nigeria bore a fruit with more oily pulp and a smaller kernel than their counterparts farther west, so did the Deli Dura palms, descended from the four Buitenzorg seedlings, hold a distinct advantage over the ordinary Duras of West and Central Africa.¹⁰

      This superiority probably reflected the optimal soils, rainfall, and sunshine conditions of Southeast Asia, rather than any special genetic quirks of the Buitenzorg palms. However, the fact that all the Deli Duras were descended from so few parents meant that the early planters could expect fairly uniform results¹¹. This lowered the risks associated with plantation cultivation, an effect reinforced by the absence of the palm’s usual pests and diseases in its new geographic setting.

      The relatively high yields and low risks from planting oil palms in Southeast Asia helped the industry to grow quickly, following the pioneering plantings of Hallet in Sumatra and of his friend Henri Fauconnier in Malaya in the 1910s. By 1919, more than 6,000 ha had been planted in Sumatra, rising to 32,000 ha in 1925, by which time 3,400 ha had come under cultivation in Malaya. Over the next five years, a further 17,000 ha were planted in Malaya, while the Sumatran area doubled.

      This rapid expansion came not only because of growing confidence in the oil palm but also because of the grave postwar problems of the rubber industry. The oil palm was seen as a useful means of diversification to avoid a dangerous dependence on rubber. The pace of new planting slowed during the worldwide slump of the 1930s, but by 1938 Malaya had nearly 30,000 ha and Sumatra more than 90,000 ha under cultivation¹².

      FELDA Schemes

      Developments in Sumatra hung fire for some time after 1945. Meanwhile, developments in Malaysia were more rapid, especially after 1960, when the replanting of old rubber estates with oil palms was stimulated by FELDA’s smallholder schemes.

      At the same time, the Malaysian government and the estate sector launched several systematic Tenera-breeding efforts, in which high-yielding parents were selected and through which increasingly productive planting materials were generated. The new trees not only yielded more fruit but also produced a type of fruit that was ideally suited to the new screw presses which, having been tried out in the 1950s in the Belgian Congo, became widely used in Malaysia from the mid-1960s. These innovative developments have been described as one of the world’s outstanding agricultural achievements¹³.

      2

      INHERENT QUALITIES OF A VERSATILE OIL

      Health Characteristics

      Palm oil is popularly used for cooking in view of its high smoke point and heat tolerance. For this reason too, palm oil is also extremely popular with food manufacturers as this high smoke point ensures that the end product retains its flavor with less nutritional degradation.

      There was another reason why food manufacturers favor palm oil in food manufacturing - Palm oil is one of the world’s healthiest oils. As a natural vegetable oil, it contains no trans-fats (trans-fatty acids) or cholesterol.

      In his book, The Palm Oil Miracle¹⁴, Dr. Bruce Fife ND, described palm oil as a Miracle Oil. Dr. Fife pointed out that many scientific studies published in peer-reviewed journals have shown that palm oil had many health benefits. Some of the health benefits of palm oil include the following characteristics. Palm oil:

      • Improves blood circulation

      • Protects against heart disease

      • Protects against cancer

      • Prevents Alzheimer’s disease

      • Boosts immunity

      • Improves blood sugar control

      • Improves nutrient absorption and vitamin and mineral status

      • Aids in the prevention and treatment of malnutrition

      • Supports healthy lung function

      • Supports healthy liver function

      • Helps strengthen bones and teeth

      • Supports eye health

      • Highest natural source of health promoting tocotrienols

      • Helps protect against mental deterioration, including Alzheimer’s disease

      • Richest dietary source of vitamin E and beta-carotenes

      Besides palm oil helps to keep hair and skin healthy, provides body with different vitamins, which is essential to good health. And like other vegetable oils, it is cholesterol free. Like other common edible fats and oils, palm oil is easily digested, absorbed and utilized for the support of healthy growth and plays a critical role in providing nutrition worldwide. Results from human studies show that a palm oil-enriched diet does not raise blood cholesterol and even leads to lower plasma cholesterol in some studies.

      In January 2013, the American syndicated TV talk show Dr. Oz helmed by Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and teaching professor at Columbia University, called red palm oil the miracle fat of 2013 describing it as an amazing fat that helps stop the signs of aging inside and out! It has to be borne in mind that Dr. Oz did not make the claim lightly for the Dr. Oz Show has a full-time in-house medical unit made up of researchers, medical producers and physicians. The medical unit works daily with Dr. Oz and producers in researching, developing, writing and producing show segments. The medical unit also evaluates and approves all products that appear on the show.

      Yield Characteristics

      Apart from its health characteristics, palm oil has another characteristic that made the oil such a formidable powerhouse and juggernaut in the global edible oil market – its hyper yielding characteristic. Each hectare planted with palm oil yields an incredible 4-5 metric tons of edible oil. That made palm oil something of a super crop and it sent shudders down the spines of competing edible oils such as soy, rapeseed (canola) and sunflower oil. For 4-5 metric tons per hectare is just an average. Best in class palm oil plantations are producing 8 metric tons per hectare and current R&D points to a staggering genetic potential of 20 metric tons per hectare! By comparison, soy, sunflower and rapeseed have reached their genetic limit and soy only produces a mere 0.37, sunflower a meager 0.57 and rapeseed a paltry 0.69 metric tons per hectare¹⁵!

      Such incredible yields meant only one thing – low and competitive pricing.

      Versatility

      Palm oil is probably one of the most versatile of all the edible oils in the global market. About 80% of Malaysia palm oil goes into food uses. It is found in one out of 10 food products worldwide as it can be used without – or with only minimal-modification. In fact, palm oil is so versatile that some of its by-products have been used as car parts, as sound proofing and even as construction material!

      Traditional applications:

      Food uses

      Palm oil and palm kernel oil is used wholly or in blends with other oils. Look for these basic ingredients in frying/cooking oils, shortenings, vegetable ghee, margarines and spreads, and confectionery fats.

      New applications include use in emulsion-based powdered and consumer foods such as pourable margarine, mayonnaise, soup-mixes, imitation cheese and micro-encapsulated palm oil. Red palm oil or red

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