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Palm Oil, the Oslo Tragedy and the Australian Senate
| It was Mark Twain who wrote in his highly cynical "What Is Man?": "...when you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants." Given that the presently dominant religion in the West is multiculturalism, and its twin prophets are the Western governments and the press, the mainstream-media-consuming masses tend to be enveloped in the pleasantly dimmed lights of multicultural orthodoxy, and seldom get a chance of getting "too much light" of the opposing ideology -- for a simple reason that this opposing side lacks the platform from which to speak. More than any other reason, this may account for the Oslo atrocity. If politically incorrect views -- like those opposing multiculturalism in Europe -- are to be denied the mainstream platform for fear they would shed "too much light" on the state of the body politic and move it in the wrong direction, then those who carry those views may well get frustrated as being denied a fair chance to participate in the public debate, and to define the direction of the public policy. Similarly, palm oil has been straight jacketed as a commodity that is buffeted first by the heart health scare and now by green activism to such an extent that the commodity has been denied the mainstream platform for fear that it would shed "too much light" on the feel good conservation movement sweeping the world now! The health scare tactics of the American Heart Savers Association (AHSA) and the now discredited Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was not too difficult to dispel as issues such as the impact of ingesting palm oil on heart health could easily be proved or disproved by scientific research. So the issue of palm oil being mostly saturated fat and consequently bad for heart health died a natural death when tons of scientific papers proved that the simplistic assertions of these alphabet soup assassins (CSPI and AHSA) were just that: simplistic and without basis in scientific fact. In fact, the converse proved to be true: Palm oil is heart healthy as the saturated fatty acids in the sn-1 and -3 position (typically found in palm oil) has very different biological consequences than animal fats such as lard and milk fats as the saturated fats are primarily found in the sn-2 position! (See: Donald J. McNamara, PhD: "Palm Oil and Heart Health: A case of Manipulated Perception and Misuse of Science" 240S Vol 29 No. 3(s) Journal of the American College of Nutrition). The deforestation and orangutan extinction issue concocted by first CSPI and now adopted worldwide by an entire coterie of anti-palm oil campaigners is different proposition altogether. It had the emotive elements with the clever use of orangutan imagery such as that conjured up by Greenpeace and their orangutan finger in a KitKat ad coupled with "save-the-world" altruism. For anti-palm oil campaigners like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE), the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Wetlands International, Climate Advisers, zoos like the Auckland Zoo and the Melbourne Zoo and even wannabe green politicians like Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon and EU MEP Nessa Childers it was all too easy to abuse satellite imagery to further their cause. This tactic is favored by these smooth operators as all that was required was to take a satellite image of a logged over area covering several square miles, say in the jungles of Borneo or Sumatra and point to it as evidence of widespread deforestation by the palm oil industry. It is typical of the world media in reporting stories with elements of sex or sexiness to trigger a wave of intense investigative reporting to the extent that reporters would be camped outside even the African homes of, for instance the African maid accuser of the ex-IMF chief, Dominic Strauss Kahn. However, when confronted with rather more dry stories such as that involving palm oil, the editors conveniently regurgitated the press releases of these anti-palm oil campaigners so much so that the story grows to the extent that it is now accepted as gospel truth! Told often enough, even the editors of renowned mainstream papers and TV/Radio report the wild and unsubstantiated claims of these anti-palm oil campaigners as if it is gospel truth! So Senators in the Australian Senate, despite the recommendations of their own Community Affairs legislative Committee (having convened hearings to hear representations from various stakeholders) not to proceed with Nick Xenophon's Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labeling - Palm Oil) Bill proceeded to do just that! That is the situation facing a commodity that is probably one of the most inherently benign edible oil crops known to man, environmentally speaking. For a crop that is planted on only 0.23% of the global agricultural land area and yet produces 30% of the world's supply of edible oil, it is indeed ironical that palm oil should be subjected to the kind of intense media exposure given to the wild and unsubstantiated claims of these organizations. Add to that the fact that the total population of Indonesia and Malaysia which together produces 90% of the world supply of palm oil accounts for 3.9% of the world's population, it is obvious that both countries have not even utilized one tenth of their of their proportionate and inalienable right to exploit their own lands for industrial or agricultural purposes! With a yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare, that is close to 10 times that of its nearest competitor, a significant portion of global palm oil supply (40%) is planted by smallholders. Yet the green groups and the world's media have crafted the illusion that the crop is planted only by giant corporations that is constantly at odds with poor defenseless natives who are driven from their forest abodes by the roar of chain-saws and earth movers! The truth is far removed from that. These poor defenseless natives engage in litigation claims in the Malaysian High Court against palm oil corporations and actually win. (see: http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1859&Itemid=1212) These baseless allegations against palm oil have now assumed a life of its own so much so that even seasoned senators sitting in the Australian Senate have bought into the fiction. However, what is most galling for the palm oil industry is that the palm oil industry's views have been colored with a tinge of politically incorrectness and it has now been denied a legitimate mainstream platform. The Chairman of the world's largest palm oil company with a most enviable sustainability record, Tun Musa Hitam of Sime Darby Bhd was recently moved to implore palm oil's critics, especially the Australian Senators and the world's media to "come see for yourself" instead of pontificating from afar! THE END |
About the Author
Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.
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