Our ‘No Palm Oil’ petition touched the hearts of Italian consumAtors and was picked up by Coop Italy, but also by the ‘U’ group in France and now also in Spain. Get palm oil out of our foods! Updates to follow.
Coop Italia has made the turn in the Italian market toward eliminating palm from all of its own-brand foods that contained it. His decision was immediate, right after Efsa’s assessment of the serious health hazards associated with process contaminants in which the tropical fat is extraordinarily rich.
‘Palm oil-free,’ the choice of U and SuperSano
France’s Système U Group, which had already boasted of phasing out palm from its branded products since 2011-as part of a larger project geared toward food sustainability-has in turn taken the plunge. (1) In the sense of demanding complete traceability ‘down to the plant’ to ensure the protection of human rights and the environment. With the goal of removing palm, in the medium term, from all private label references.
The Spanish eco-friendly supermarket chain SuperSano, in turn, has now made a solemn commitment to get rid of this inconvenient ingredient. (2) Spain, by the way, is the world’s leading olive oil producer. And the widespread use of palm oil in the name of saving money ‘at any cost’ by the planet’s food industries has cost her dearly as well. To its consumers, thus forced to gorge on unnecessary saturated fats, as well as carcinogenic and genotoxic toxins.
An unaffordable price
But it has cost dearly especially to the local people, who have been violently driven from their ancestral lands. (3) And to the environment, whose green lungs have been deflowered and set on fire in the name of greedy monoculture. Which, in spite of theorems advanced by palmocrats, requires huge amounts of water and neurotoxic pesticides. As well as employing slaves, including children, to secure the lucrative margins that Big Food always demands.
The hour of the palm is approaching, in southern Europe that shuns it from foods as in Scandinavia that shuts it out of investments. In the name of progress, which is increasingly necessary when those who produce food endanger life and basic rights. Of those who inhabited virgin forests, those who worked on plantations, those who consumed their saturated crops.
Change is possible, and it is up to us to foster it.
Notes
(2) http://www.supersano.es/supersano-primer-supermercado-espana-suprime-los-productos-aceite-palma/
(3) is the phenomenon of land robbery, so-called land grabbing. Of which palm is to date the number one cause worldwide
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
