Palm oil labor abuses linked to world's top brands, banks

[sl8]

https://apnews.com/7b634596270cc6aa7578a062a30423bb

Palm oil labor abuses linked to world’s top brands, banks

By MARGIE MASON and ROBIN McDOWELL
September 24, 2020

PENINSULAR, Malaysia (AP) —

[...]

An Associated Press investigation found many like Jum in Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia – an invisible workforce consisting of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. Together, the two countries produce about 85 percent of the world’s estimated $65 billion palm oil supply.

Palm oil is virtually impossible to avoid. Often disguised on labels as an ingredient listed by more than 200 names, it can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves and in most cosmetic brands. It’s in paints, plywood, pesticides and pills. It’s also present in animal feed, biofuels and even hand sanitizer.

The AP interviewed more than 130 current and former workers from two dozen palm oil companies who came from eight countries and labored on plantations across wide swaths of Malaysia and Indonesia. Almost all had complaints about their treatment, with some saying they were cheated, threatened, held against their will or forced to work off unsurmountable debts. Others said they were regularly harassed by authorities, swept up in raids and detained in government facilities.

They included members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya minority, who fled ethnic cleansing in their homeland only to be sold into the palm oil industry. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats also described coming ashore in search of help, but instead ending up being trafficked onto plantations -- sometimes with police involvement.

[...]

[uriel1972]

1. buisness as usual

the joys of Capitalism are for the few not the many.

[Submariner]

2. When you all enjoy your Skippy Peanut Butter

sandwich, picture the Borneo tree being felled with the Orangatang holding her infant being crushed, killed, or just severely injured.

All that wildlife death and habitat destruction to make way for palm trees that strip what little nutrients are in the rainforest soils, requiring constant rainforest removal to keep the palm oil tree crop making money for today’s forest rapists.

[NNadir]

3. Peanuts have nothing to do with palm oil. They are oil seed crops in their own right.

Palm oil is used in many foods, but not in peanut butter.

A big driver for palm oil plantations, mentioned in the excerpt with generic "biofuels" is the German "Renewable Energy" Portfolio Standards, which call for the use of biodiesel, which is the methyl esters of hydrolyzed palm oil. There's no way in hell that rapeseed oil can meet this demand.

It's yet another example - among many - of why so called "renewable energy" is not renewable, and yet another example of why putting band-aids on the car CULTure is unsustainable and environmentally destructive.

[Laurelin]

4. Palm oil is used in many peanut butter brands

When i lived in the US, the only peanut butter I could find without palm oil was the kind that you have to stir to use. The shelf stable brands all had palm oil.

Granted, I haven't been in the US since Christmas but peanut butters still listed palm oil as an ingredient then.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo palm oil app lists Skippy as orangutan friendly.

[NNadir]

5. Someone p-mailed me about this. The jar in my house right now has...

...some rapeseed oil in it.

I pointed out that since peanut oil commands a high price, it may on occasion be economical to substitute other oils in peanut butter on occasion. I'm pretty much sure I've seen peanut butter labels for homogenized peanut butter without palm or rapeseed oil.

These additives are more likely to be emulsifiers, but in any case they are minor components, nothing even remotely comparable to other foods.

But let's be clear on something: The so called "renewable energy" disaster represented by palm oil biodiesel has had the largest impact on the destruction of Malaysian and Indonesian rain forests . The 1998 fires resulting when slash and burn clearing of those rain forests went out of control was very much tied up with the change in German "Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards," established in the 1990's which I have long considered a crime against humanity.

If we really cared about palm oil plantations, we might be more effective if we worshiped our car CULTure less. We would be more effective than carrying on about peanut butter.

As I noted in my response to the Pmail, if Germany really cared about sustainable diesel fuel - they don't - they would run diesel engines on dimethyl ether obtained by the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. Were they to do this, they'd only be able to do so if they gave up their rather appalling willingness to utilize natural gas, natural gas being the starting material for close to 99% of the hydrogen produced in the world.

Their wind garbage won't do it. All of the noise and pilot plants for "wind to hydrogen" have generated far more noise than hydrogen. The only way to make sustainable hydrogen as a captive intermediate is with nuclear power. The Germans hate nuclear power, much to the detriment of every living thing on the planet.

[Submariner]

6. Check out the label on the Skippy Natural peanut butter

when you shop next. The label I saw a few months ago stated 'palm oil'. I'll recheck the label myself.

I know it's not just PB, its utilization in general as discussed in the other thread posts, which makes it all add up to the ecological biodiversity disasters we see today.

[NNadir]

7. I commented on this elsewhere in this thread. The destruction of the Malaysian and Indonesian...

...rain forests is mostly tied to biodiesel production, as evidenced by the 1998 South East Asian fire disaster that coincided with the release of German "renewable energy portfolio standards"

To complain about peanut butter is just silly. At best, it's a minor component of peanut butter, probably an additive as an emulsifier. If one compares the size of a fuel tank on a diesel tractor trailer with a jar of peanut butter, and recognizes that the tractor's fuel tank is filled every damned day, one can easily grasp where the problem lies.