Earth Balance, palm oil, rainforests and RAN

In November of 2006, Eric wrote a post about the Orangutans in Malaysia, and the associated palm oil issues. There are some first hand accounts linked in that post of his, and they’re heart-wrenching.

I realized in horror that my beloved Earth Balance uses palm oil. I wrote them asking about the palm oil that they use, and this was their response:

100% of the palm oil used in Earth Balance originates in peninsular Malaysia and not Eastern Malaysia (i.e. Sarawak and Sabah on the Island of Borneo), the main home for orangutans. As the orangutan.com website points out, slash and burn clearing methods are illegal. We purchase our oil exclusively from reputable, law-abiding plantations which are registered with the Malaysian
government.

Palm oil and soybean oil are the major edible oils in the world, together they account for over 50% of all oil consumed worldwide. The alternative to palm oil in the world markets is hydrogenated soybean oil. If we reduce the world supply of palm, the markets will compensate by growing more soybeans.

Soybean cultivation is wasteful of natural resources. Palm plantations require only a fraction of the acreage to produce the same quantity of oil as soybean farms. An acre of palm trees will produce roughly 8,000-9,000 kgs of oil per year while an acre of soybeans produces roughly 1,000 kgs of oil
per year. Brazil is now the world’s largest and fastest growing producer of soybeans. For every acre of Malaysian palm oil converted back to jungle, several acres of Brazilian or Argentinean forest must be converted to farmland.

It is for these reason that we feel palm oil should be part of an environmentally friendly food supply chain. The following site has more information about the cultivation of palm oil in Malaysia.

http://www.mpopc.org.my/index1.htm.

This looked like good news. I checked out the website they had linked in, and it looked legit, with what looked to be some pretty solid information. I didn’t look into palm oil further, but there has always been a worry in the back of my mind. What will I find out if I do research it for real?

It has been a year and a half. Today RAN (Rainforest Action Network) posted about rainforests and palm oil. They are in the middle of an action campaign, where people act as supermarket sleuths and register products that use palm oil, and starting on July 1, RAN is going to start contacting these companies and basically demand that these companies give up their palm oil. And soy oil? I would think they would cover that as well.

I registered Earth Balance on RAN’s site. I also commented on RAN’s blog post to see what they could tell me about Earth Balance’s response to my question a year and a half ago. You can read the exchange by following the link above, but part of the response from Brihannala at RAN was this:

If killing orangutans were the only problem that existed with palm oil, then maybe Earth Balance could get off the hook. But it simply is not. Every where that palm is grown– very much including Peninsular Malaysia– involves clear cutting rainforest and planting massive monoculture plantations– with serious consequences for both endangered species (the tapir lives in Peninsular Malaysia.. does it deserve to go extinct?) and the climate. It also involves displacing communities off their traditionally owned land, which regularly occurs in Peninsular Malaysia. Particularly in Peninsular Malaysia, migrant workers from Indonesia and India are forced into modern day slavery, forced to work for minuscule wages while paying back the companies for their their transportation from their country of origin. It’s a wreck.

Well, I can’t argue with that.

I think this is always a danger when we focus too completely on one piece of an issue – the companies can find ways to address the small concern while ignoring the bigger picture. And if we don’t know the bigger picture, we’ll accept their “green animal friendly washing”. (Obviously I made that phrase up just now. And it is cumbersome. Greenwashing is a great and immediately understandable term; do we have one for the animal rights aspect?)

When I emailed Earth Balance, I had talked specifically about the orangutans and the clear cutting and burning. I didn’t even know about the tapir, I didn’t know about the workers, and I really was fairly ignorant about rain forest issues in general.

Every time I turn around, I’m reminded about how intertwined these issues are. Social justice, environmental protection, animal rights. Palm oil is a hat trick of issues, and it is something we all need to pay attention to.

Rainforests are important and delicate places. They are huge carbon sinks, which makes them incredibly important to the entire issue of global climate change. Their carbon is held above ground, however. Something I remember from college ecology classes is that there is virtually nothing contained in the soil of a rainforest, it is closer to a desert in terms of soil ecology than it is to anything else. All of the nutrients and minerals and everything needed for life is held in the plants themselves. Before they drop their leaves, they actually are able to pull the nutrients out of them first, making the reclamation of nutrients immediate, rather than having it be processed through decomposition and uptake through the soil.

This makes rainforests really bad areas to clear to use for farming, obviously. It also makes rainforests really bad areas to clear from a carbon stand point, because it is all held in the living matter. Cut those trees down, and you’re destroying direct carbon sinks.

Not to mention the fact that rainforests remain the most biodiverse areas of the planet. Biodiversity is important for all of us, for all of our survival, though you have to take the long term view of it to understand why it is important.

And you can’t talk about the destruction of the rainforests without talking about giant corporations and how they profit off of the social injustices perpetuated on the local people. Whether it is South America or Asia, the script is the same.

Now that I have more information, I’m sad to say that Earth Balance’s answers are far from satisfactory.

I’m hoping that someone has a vegan palm-oil free and soy-oil free replacement they can recommend. A recipe, a product, something…

Regardless, I’ll be going without Earth Balance from here on out, unless they change their product to eliminate the palm and soy oils. Pleasing my tastebuds with a buttery spread just isn’t worth what it costs the people, the environment, and of course the animals themselves.

4/22/2011 — Update! There is a recipe for a buttery spread that is soy free and palm free, and which Ryan reports to be quite tasty! Check out the recipe and also Ryan’s review of the recipe.

11/11/11 — Update! An even better recipe for a buttery spread:
http://www.veganbaking.net/other-vegan-treats/735-vegan-butter

3/10/12 — Update! A recipe for palm-free shortening!

http://www.veganbaking.net/other-vegan-treats/776-how-to-make-vegan-shortening

02/17/12 — Update to add links for RAN’s 3 part series on “What is Sustainable Palm?”

• What is Sustainable Palm Oil? Part One
• What is Sustainable Palm Oil? Part Two
• What is Sustainable Palm Oil? Part Three

Also, what about Agropalma (in Brazil), right? Here’s an in-depth article: Occupy the Amazon so as Not to Lose it—with Palm Oil

sustainability

I can’t claim to know that much about sustainability, but whenever I get an email from FARM, I think about sustainability. Does that sound strange? Well, I have heard Dawn of FARM mention that she came from the sustainability movement, originally, and I have often wanted to pick her brain and get a crash course on the issue. Not that I’ve ever had the chance, but the thought is often there.

I also know that a lot of folks in the sustainability movement see vegan outreach in many areas of the world as being…hm. I don’t know the term that would best describe it, but something along the lines of elitist, obtuse, or maybe even blind. And I can sort of see their point, even though I very strongly believe that the absolute most efficient and most sustainable thing to do in any environment is grow plants. I know, however, that I am basing this primarily on my biology knowledge, and ignoring any potential social issues.

And really, we can’t frame the argument for other people in situations we’ve never imagined, so we have to educate ourselves before we can think to offer anything.

There are small things I do in my own life with sustainability in mind. Growing a garden, of course, and shopping at the farmers market when I can. Not using plastic bottles, and avoiding as much plastic in general as possible. Composting (which I’m only just getting started on) and recycling, of course. This has a lot to do with avoiding putting things into the garbage stream. I also try to avoid taking from the earth, and so I avoid buying things new, when I can. Books, I have to be perfectly honest, are a big failure of mine here. I indulge myself at the bookstore way too often, even though I also use half.com to find used books, and I use the library quite a bit as well.

I also buy off craigslist when I can, rather than buying something new. Today, for instance, I bought a desk. It is a really nice desk, actually, and I’m lucky to be in an area with an active craigslist – I know not all areas have such an active list, and buying things used is much much easier when nice used things are easy to find.

The man I bought the desk from noticed right away the RAN shirt I was wearing. Turns out he works for a company that essentially does sustainability consulting for huge corporations. Like…Walmart. He saw the look on my face, and started laughing. He knew exactly what I was thinking, and we ended up having an interesting conversation. He talked about what his company does to get the big execs at places like Walmart to sit down and talk to the environmental groups, like RAN, and see what they can do to improve. He’s helping teach these big exploitative companies that the better they are from the start in protecting the environment, the better they are overall. Image, of course, but also from a cost perspective. It always comes down to that.

I’m not sure what I feel about it, overall. I think what he’s doing is important – he’s helping people to look at the environment in a way they might never have done on their own, and that’s important. I think there is a deeper more serious problem, and it has to do with exploitation. Of the earth, of the people. Is Walmart going to stop selling massive quantities of new cheap stuff?

No, of course they are not, they are only going to try to sell more. That’s what they do, that’s their business.

And I have a problem with that – if nothing else, the earth can not sustain that consumption indefinitely. The social aspects are legendary as well, of course.

Still, it was an interesting conversation, and an interesting business that this man works for.

I was also able to talk to him about SHAC and animal testing. He had a really hard time imagining how they were convicted of terrorism, without having ever committed a crime. It is indeed a mystery, right up until you realize they were driving HLS to bankruptcy and had their trial in that Land of BigPharm, which is also known as New Jersey.

It was amazing to find someone with whom I agreed on so many levels, just by buying a desk from craigslist.

Green Festival, DC

I went to the Green Festival today, tabled with RAN, and despite the various things I always seem to hear about environmentalists being resistant to considering veganism, the two other people tabling with me were also vegan, and it seemed like at least half the people stopping at the table were wearing stickers that said things like “veganism is direct action” or “save an animal, eat a vegetable”. Now, I didn’t ask everyone if they were vegan, but when I would talk about the links between animal rights, environmental rights, and social justice, I got emphatic agreement. So I was encouraged, overall!

I didn’t have much time to spend at the festival, but I did cruise the activism aisle and came away with more ideas and energy, which was the point, at least for me. I also got some temptation soy ice cream, which is a happy event.

I talked to the people at the Carbon Conscious Consumer table, and they had people pledging to do various things, like give up bottled water, use cloth grocery bags, and some other things that I mostly do. I don’t agree with everything they say (they’re against factory farming, but promote “free range” instead of veganism), but overall I think I might get some ideas from their site.

I skipped the Vegetarian Society of DC, COK, and FARM tables, because I talk to them all the time anyway! I’ll be tabling for COK at the Takoma Park Street Fair tomorrow. And I helped out at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary this morning.

My animal rights activism will continue to outweigh other activism I participate in, but it was a great experience for me to table for RAN, to be part of the environmental movement.