Greenpeace today blocked one entrance to Fonterra HQ.
Greenpeace this morning barricaded the Auckland corporate headquarters of Fonterra, protesting the use of palms kernels as stock feed.
Around 20 demonstrators erected a 1.8m by 2.4m long barricade fixed with television screens inside the foyer of the Princes St offices.
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Greenpeace claim Fonterra import one quarter of the world’s palm kernel, and native forest in Indonesia is being cleared at a rate of two per cent per year in order for the crop to be grown.
“We hope the message has gone in there and Fonterra take corporate responsibility for the deforestation that is happening in Indonesia at this very minute.”
Let’s say that the following claims are true:
- Fonterra import one quarter of the world’s palm kernel
- native forest in Indonesia is being cleared at a rate of two per cent
Does that mean that Fonterra is responsible, even directly for deforestation (assuming that’s a bad thing)?
Well, no.
See, the forests are cleared to grow palm oil, which is used in various foodstuffs.
What’s happened is that the farmers who produce the oil discovered that they had this by-product called palm kernel. Fonterra decided to import the by-product for use as farm feed.
Fonterra are not importing palm oil. Plenty of other companies are using it all over the world. The most well know case in New Zealand was when Cadbury started (then stopped) using it in it’s chocolate.
So let’s think about this.
Let’s imagine someone found a use for say, offcuts produced from making plastic milk bottles. Let’s say they made some sort of building material out of it. Then they find Greenpeace protesting them for encouraging plastic production.
That’s how utterly stupid this protest is. Stopping someone from consuming a by product is simply going to lead to big piles of useless by-product. It doesn’t have a snowballs chance in heck of stopping the production of the main product, and it certainly won’t stop forests being destroyed – in fact it could even do the opposite.
Comments on: "Another protest about nothing" (4)
native forest in Indonesia is being cleared at a rate of two per cent
This is one of those wonderously bullshit statistics. Firstly, only a small proportion of this 2% is being cleared to grow palm oil. Secondly, it completely ignores the fact that the soil is too poor to sustain more than a couple of seasons worth of crops. The forest is then allowed to grow back over the non-productive land. Thus the NET loss of forest is way smaller than 2% and is almost entire due to population expansion.
But perish the thought that facts should get in the way of a good protest…
Got a link to back up those wild claims?
Wonder why Greenpeace doesn’t protest against all the companies which use the palm oil rather than the waste produce pke?
Well exactly. It’s utterly bizarre that they’re generating so much hype over the consumption of a by-product.
But at the same time typical. This is the same movement that shutdown a perfectly sustainable seal-hunt, and destroyed an indigenous community just for the publicity.