KUALA LUMPUR: During the 1980s, the palm oil sector endured constant attack by Western-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which hurled the sector with a number of accusations.
These accusations mainly focus on palm oil as being unhealthy thus making it dangerous for consumption.
Subsequently, the Malaysian palm oil industry backed by the government went all out with guns blazing to counter all these accusations with scientific evidence at hand.
The brickbats has somewhat simmered down but resurfaced again of late in particular in Europe with new claims that palm oil destroys the habitat of orangutans and is a contributing factor towards deforestation and global warming.
But the Malaysian palm oil industry did not take it sitting down and continued dispelling all these negative connotations and thanks to all of its efforts, it can be safely said that all these accusations have dissipated as the NGOs no longer have the ammunition to paint a negative picture on palm oil anymore.
Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Datuk Dr Yusof Basiron said all these new accusations were partly due to the palm oil's popularity which has seen a volume spike in the last ten years.
"Palm oil has been slowly replacing the edible oils in Europe and this has caused a serious concern to the edible oil producers over there and the NGOs to initiate the anti-palm oil campaigns in Europe.
We in turn since 2004 have initiated the sustainability campaign of palm oil by getting certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil certification scheme.
As a result, the entry of certified palm oil into the European Union continues to rise simply because the Malaysian producers complied and the NGOs have achieved what they set out to fight for in the first place.
Yusof said as a result the value of sustainable palm oil has helped preserve the environment; capping global warming emissions as oil palm trees is a net sequester of carbon dioxide.
"Malaysian producers are not involved in recent deforestation of forested areas and are responsible producers with high traceability as any leakages can be traced back right to the individual mill and plantations.
"As a result, intake of palm oil has grown in Europe and there are no more issues to be levelled at us. They wanted us to be certified under the RSPO scheme and we did. We even went a step further up when we created our own Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil Certification scheme with zero deforestation.
There is no reason for the NGOs not to be happy with the Malaysian palm oil industry as all requirements have been fulfilled and we met all the standards.
There is also no evidence to claim that palm oil contributes to massive deforestation as in fact the past 100 years, palm oil has only deforested 5 million ha of land compared to soyabean oil, which has deforested 3-4 times more than palm oil in the last one year alone.
"Palm oil is fast gaining recognition as it contributes 30 per cent to the world's edible oils and fats production and evidence has shown that palm oil is the best using minimal land to produce any given tonnage of vegetable oil.
As a comparison, soybean uses ten times more land compared to oil palm to produce the same tonnage of vegetable oil. The NGOs should accept this fact and stop penalising palm oil.
Yusof said palm oil is a major vegetable oil in the oils and fats market as it is abundantly produced, available all year long, competitively priced and highly versatile.
"Therefore, it remains a strong competitor to other competing vegetable oils as palm oil can easily replace them in many food and non-food applications.
These might be seen as a threat to other oils such as rapeseed, which is the major vegetable oil in the EU.
The attacks on palm oil on environmental issues by NGOs can also be viewed as an attempt to divert the consumers’ perception away from these ‘good’ qualities of palm oil directing them to view palm oil unfavourably when fed with inaccurate information about palm oil and the industry.
The aim is clear; which is to put obstacles to the palm oil market access in Europe. Nevertheless, palm oil should not be seen as a threat to other oils as I believe the market is big enough to cater for every available vegetable oil.
Indeed, data have shown that the world is projected to requires 1.75 times more the amount of oils and fats as produced today to feed the growing global populations, which is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050.
Currently, the world is producing about 200 million tonnes of oils and fats and the demand for additional 150 million tonnes of these commodities by 2050 will pose a big challenge for everybody to fulfil.