permaculture

[Brent McMillan <brent@gp.org>]

ADM's New Frontiers: Palm Oil Deforestation and Child Labor
by Charlie Cray, Special to CorpWatch
May 18th, 2010

ADM used to be known as the country’s corporate welfare king, and its 
top executives drew headlines as they perp-walked to prison. That was 
then, when the company ran elaborate price-fixing schemes in the lysine 
and other global commodity markets. This is now: For the second year in 
a row, ADM topped Fortune magazine’s list of most admired food 
production companies.

But underneath its improved public image, ADM’s major forays into new 
markets, including cocoa and palm oil, are raising concerns. This time 
they center on the impacts of the global food conglomerate’s supply 
chain, and on charges of complicity in forced child labor and massive 
deforestation.

The Palm Oil Food Chain of Destruction

About 40 million tons of palm oil worth $20 billion is produced each 
year – 85 percent of it by Indonesia and Malaysia, where giant oil palm 
plantations account for the highest rates of deforestation in the world. 
As of 2009, more than seven million hectares of palm oil plantations had 
been planted where forests super-rich in diversity once stood. Within a 
couple of decades, the deforestation is projected to triple to more than 
20 million hectares.

While most palm oil is processed for cooking oil, biofuels and other 
uses in China and Southeast Asia, U.S. consumption has tripled in the 
past five years, making North America the fastest-growing market. Most 
palm oil exported to the United States – one million tons in 2008/2009 – 
is extracted from the hard kernel at the center of the fruit, and 
processed into a variety of ingredients for food products, including 
vitamins.

U.S. consumers might be shocked to learn that an estimated 10 percent of 
common grocery goods – including chips and crackers, ice cream, 
margarine, instant noodles, chocolate, cereals, canned vegetables, 
soaps, shampoos, cosmetics and detergents – already contain some kind of 
palm oil ingredient. They might be doubly shocked to learn that palm oil 
is implicated in the same health problems that are driving trans fats 
out of the market. Merely replacing trans fatty acids with other 
artery-clogging saturated vegetable fats not only does little to bring 
down the incidence of heart attacks and strokes (still the top killers 
in America for public health), but it is also fueling deforestation and 
social injustice halfway across the planet.

more...

http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15587

posted by:

Brent McMillan, Steward of Woodhaven
Avilla, IN USA