http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19991/story.htm Palm oil debate weighs ice cream and elephants
MALAYSIA: February 28, 2003 KUALA LUMPUR - Ice cream lovers and French fry fanatics would not know it but these foods put a taste of Malaysia in their mouths. They are dining on palm oil, an ingredient in many processed foods, and unknowingly entering a debate on a controversial, yet key, crop for the South East Asian nation and fellow producers. Critics say palm oil contains unhealthy fats and comes from plantations cut from the forest homes of threatened species such as orangutans and elephants. But Malaysia, which earns $4.5 billion a year as the world's largest palm oil exporter, is squaring up to defend its main agricultural crop. "We have now got to make a stand. As far as Malaysia is concerned we've got a fantastic story to tell, which the outside world does not know," said M.R. Chandran, the chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association that represents 40 percent of the country's growers. Palm oil supporters argue research on fat in the human diet is inconclusive, only a few errant growers cause environmental damage, and the crop brings valuable income to remote rural communities. Flying into Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur International Airport gives a view of row upon row of palms, with oil-bearing fruit bunches lodged among fronds that flourish in equatorial humidity. Palm oil plantations cover 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres), a tenth of Malaysia and an area bigger than Belgium. From nothing in the 1950s, the oil palms have ousted the rubber trees of British colonial times to dominate Malaysia's farm sector. Palm oil makes up five percent of exports, valuable diversity in an economy built on electronics and crude oil. Last year palmoil futures hit 3-1/2-year highs on ravenous world demand for edible oils and shortages of arch-rival soy oil. But scarcity of suitable new land and perennial problems with foreign labour mean Malaysian production will soon slip behind that of neighbouring Indonesia. BLACKENED NAME Rampant forest fires on Borneo island in the late 1990s blackened the reputation of palm oil, as haze blanketed much of Southeast Asia for weeks. The fires, mainly in Indonesian parts of the island, were often started to clear land for oil palms. The fires stoked talk by Western environmental groups of a palm oil boycott, to the alarm of growers and local green groups. "Oil palm is not one of those commodities you can say is all bad - there are benefits. A boycott would not solve the problem," said Meena Raman, Friends of the Earth Malaysia's secretary general. For plantation workers, poor smallholders and rural economies, oil palms provide vital income. Raman differentiates between East Malaysia on Borneo island - which plans to expand plantations by 700,000 hectares - and Peninsular Malaysia, where there is scant land for new planting. "As far as East Malaysia is concerned, Sarawak in particular, the concern there is that oil palm plantations are being pushed into lands owned by indigenous people. "We feel that there are a lot of threats to the forest - logging is still going on, then there is dam building and pulp paper plantations - it's not just oil palm alone." FAT ISSUE Among health agencies palm oil is controversial for its high saturated fat content compared with soy oil. The effect of different types of fat is a central element in debate about cholesterol build-up and resulting coronary heart disease. The World Health Organisation lists cholesterol as one of five factors responsible for a third of all disease in the West. "The world is living dangerously - either because it has little choice or because it making the wrong choices," the U.N. agency said in its latest annual World Health report. But the Malaysian palm oil industry says research into the health effects of fat are still unclear. "If you took two groups of eminent scientists and nutritionists in Europe and the United States, they would probably disagree," says Chetan Ishrani, a senior executive with broking firm Agritradex, which trades in most edible oils - including palm and soy oil. "The question is what effects the two different kinds of foods have on the human body and the jury's still out on that." JOBS NEEDED James Dawos, a senior state government official in Sarawak, says critics also ignore the state's development needs, which are more basic than elsewhere in Malaysia or anywhere in the West. "We still need development. We don't want to live on the top of the trees," he said. Sarawak assigns total protection to 10 percent of its land, 50 percent for forestry and allows development on the rest. But the picture is complicated by native groups that contest the state's right to develop what they say is ancestral land. They want a greater share of development benefits. In Sabah, Malaysia's most eastern state, environmentalists are trying to marry the interests of planters with those of local people and wildlife. "We are not talking in terms of a boycott or using alternative oils because then we are just passing the problem from one country to another," says Andrew Ng, a policy analyst with the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Palm oil trees, which thrive only in the tropics, produce a lot more oil per hectare than rivals such as soybeans and canola. That may prove critical as world population grows. "If you want to get the most oil from the least land, palm oil is best," says Ishrani. "It's the cheaper oil so its consumption and production are going to grow, there's no way to stop it." Story by Patrick Chalmers REUTERS NEWS SERVICE Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
