Is it true vegan Earth Balance butter spread uses palm oil from trees chopped down in the rainforest?!
Answers:
It is not possible to know where palm oil has come from. It is actually a sustainable product, as the trees themselves are productive for up to twenty years and the byproducts can be used to make paper. However the problem is it is a cash crop and big agriculture corporations are buying up forest in SE Asia and converting it to plantations, which is the major threatening process to Sumatran tigers, orang-utans in Sumatra and Borneo and every other species living in these habitats.
Part of the problem is the Indonesian legislation allows approval of this kind of development within only one week, which is not adequate time to perform research into the effects of deforestation. It is also occurring in regions which were affected by the 2004 Tsunami like Banda Aceh which is in the north of Sumatra. These people are very poor and the investment has helped them recover after the disaster, but it is really a case of the big agricorps from developed countries taking advantage of them as once the forest is gone they will have increased incidence of diseases such as malaria according to research into the effects of biodiversity loss ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v46… ).
There has been attempts to create an authentication scheme by a round table including the big agricorps and NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund ( http://www.rspo.org/ ). However I already do not trust WWF so this doesn't fill me with confidence. The best option is to avoid products with palm oil until we can be sure that the sources are from plantations generated on previously established croplands or from Africa where the tree is native.
EDIT: Hmmm after writing my essay I thought I better check the ingredients but they have the most annoying website the page is taking ages to load
OK here you go they state that 70% of their supply is from Malaysia but not Borneo or Indonesia. It seems they are concerned with at least appearing to be trying to ensure their product is sustainable, but whether you choose to believe them or not is up to you. http://www.earthbalancenatural.com/addre…
vegan biologist
^^^
Dude above obv knows better than i..lol
I actually bought that butter the other day, then i figured out how bad agave syrup was & did some research on palm oil(yes it is bad for the earth, contradictory name huh..lol)
I don't know where they come from, but wherever they come from is bad cause in order to get more palm oil they have to cut down/destroy other stuff to make room for those trees. & it's cheap so they do it lots.
Decided to go to trader joes or whole foods soon & get the type with nothing but peaunts in it. Shoulda done that from the begininng!
Peace
((((Alex))))
The fact that they rape rainforest land to produce these trees, yes. Palm oil is cheap, it's in many many things now. Ben and Jerry's Ice cream? Yep.