Major Campaign against Palm Oil, Destroyer of Orangutans
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 03.22.06
In September we wrote about how bakers were switching from cheap transfats to highly saturated but transfat free palm oil, and that rainforests and primate habitats were being destroyed to enlarge palm oil plantations. Now the Center for Science in the Public Interest has started a major awareness campaign with full-page ads in papers like the New York TImes, stating that "Keebler, Oreo, Mrs. Fields, Pepperidge Farm and other companies use palm oil in some of their cookies. It's found increasingly in crackers, pastries, cereals, and microwave popcorn." They also have an online petition to Wal-Mart to "adopt a corporate policy on sustainable palm oil. CSPI says that as the nation’s biggest grocery retailer, Wal-Mart should reformulate its house brands to use as little of the ingredient as possible, to seek out sustainable sources for the palm oil it does use, and to insist that its suppliers to do the same." Read the ::Press Release and ::sign the petition
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Does this refer to the same product as coconut oil, or is that something else entirely?
You can learn more about Palm Oil here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil
But what other healthier alternatives to transfats are there?
The real solution is to eat small-scale locally-made cookies. Supermarket cookies use saturated fats because they have a very long shelf life.
CSPI says: "The ad urges consumers to read labels and to select products with non-hydrogenated soybean, corn, canola, or peanut oils, all of which are more environmentally friendly and better for human hearts and arteries than palm oil. “We can find other ways of making cookies,” the ad reads. “We can’t find other ways of making orangutans.”
A large percentage of land in Malaysia is clearly gazzetted as protected forests and serve as the natural habitates for wildlife. Clearing of land for agricultural purposes can only be done on state-owned land, which naturally in future shall give way to development either how. The yield from palm oil per hectare is also significantly higher than soy or other oil sources, therefore saving us from clearing more land for the same amount of oil. This fuss about the killings of orangutan is clearly an exaggerated issue and i suggest you people check out the forest department of Malaysia website, or Malaysia Palm Oil Board before you start your smearing campaign.
about 50 orang-utans die each week due to palm oil production.