As a mother and advocate who cares deeply about our planet and is extremely concerned about global climate change, the debate about palm oil is extremely important to me. Earlier in the year, I wrote about palm oil on behalf of Rainforest Action Network in the following post here and argued that large food manufacturers must put an end to using conflict palm oil in their food. Sadly, palm oil is found in nearly 50 percent of the packaged foods on our grocery store shelves, and it is also the leading cause of orangutan extinction and rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia.

After learning about the negative impact of conflict palm oil, I made a personal choice to ban buying any products or brands that use conflict palm oil in their products. Like my issue with chocolate (read my post “The Dark Side of Chocolate”), ethically I feel it is a decision I had to made. I said goodbye to my favorite peanut butter and also stopped buying Cheese-Its for my kids. When they asked me why I explained what conflict palm oil is doing to our environment and why it is critical that we speak up about it.

Speaking out against conflict palm oil has definitely lead to some exciting changes. Earlier this week, Mars Inc. a 30 billion dollar US snack food company, heeded the pressure of advocacy groups such as Rainforest Action Network and announced a sweeping new responsibly palm oil procurement commitment plan that promises to eliminate rainforest destruction, human rights violations and climate pollutions from their supply chains or be dropped by 2015. (Read full press release here). 

Given the new developments in the palm oil debate, I wanted to feature a guest post about palm oil along with a recent US Scorecard released by the Union of Concerned Scientists about the recent push for debate about conflict palm oil.

Infographic courtesy of Rainforest Action Network