Forest Defenders Target Snack Foods, Cosmetics

Major players in the food and cosmetics industries are coming under heavy pressure from environmental activists to stop manufacturing and selling products that contain palm oil.'Warning: Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction' © Rainforest Action Network (flickr) "Companies like Hostess and Nestle are perpetuating rainforest destruction and human rights abuses by using palm oil in their products," said Leila Salazar-Lopez of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN).On Tuesday, Salazar-Lopez's group led a series of demonstrations targeting supermarkets in a number of major cities and towns across the nation, including Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco.The demonstrators demanded supermarkets apply stickers reading, "Warning! Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction" on any item that contains palm oil, an ingredient that is widely used in food and cosmetics products.Researchers say that increasing worldwide demand for palm oil is driving the construction of plantations in the tropical forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea.These forests are disappearing at the rate of 2.5 million acres every year due to clear cutting to make way for palm oil plantations. Scientists warn that the continued construction of plantations in the tropical jungles can have disastrous consequences for the global environment.Indonesia's tropical forests are considered some of the world's great carbon sinks and hence a solid source of defense in the fight against global warming."Our goal is to educate consumers and work with companies who use palm oil in their products to stop destroying rainforests. If Americans knew the extent to which their food and common household items were contributing to rainforest destruction, they'd probably think twice before buying them."- Leila Salazar-Lopez, Rainforest Action NetworkPeat lands in the province of Riau on the island of Sumatra, for example, have the capacity to store over 14 billion tons of carbon -- roughly one year's global greenhouse gas emissions. But that is changing fast as commercial concerns continue to move in.The environmental group Greenpeace claims that, due to palm oil plantation growth, about 25 percent of the peat forests in Riau have already disappeared, and there is so far no indication that the remaining ones will be shown any mercy.Forest destruction is considered responsible for about one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Greenpeace research links 4 percent of annual global emissions to the damage caused by palm oil companies to peat forests in Indonesia.As a result of the massive destruction of its forests, Indonesia has become the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- behind only China and the United States. But in the face of this information, most companies still seem unwilling to change their behavior, activists say.Research shows that major companies such as Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM), Burger King, Cargill, Dove Soap, Kraft, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever are indirectly driving much of the forest destruction due to their demand for more palm oil for their products.