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Article

8 Nov 2007

Author:
John Vidal, Guardian [UK]

Big food companies accused of risking climate catastrophe [Indonesia]

Many of the largest food and fuel companies risk climate change disaster by driving the demand for palm oil and biofuels grown on the world's greatest peat deposits, a report will say today. Unilever, Cargill, Nestlé, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, as well as all leading UK supermarkets, are large users of Indonesian palm oil, much of which comes from the province of Riau in Sumatra, where an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon - equivalent to nearly one year's entire global carbon emissions - is locked up... [Greenpeace] accepts that retail companies and food manufacturers have virtually no way of tracing where the palm oil they use comes from...[but] said yesterday that the companies could not be exonerated from blame... Nestlé...said it sourced its supplies from "responsible" suppliers. "At present there is no palm oil that is certified as sustainable..." ...Unilever...said it had invested a lot of time and money in ensuring that its palm oil supplies were grown in an environmentally responsible way... Cargill...said: "We already make impact assessments for new developments and do not develop in areas of high conservation value." [also refers to Cadbury's Flake (part of Cadbury Schweppes), Kit Kat (part of Hershey)]