After years of campaigns and petitions from environmentalists and conservationists from all around the world, we are set to see an enormous change in Europe as of next month. On December 13th 2014, manufacturers will have to label palm oil in their ingredients and will no longer be able to hide behind the generic term, vegetable oil .
Over the past couple of decades, the palm oil industry has exploded with vast areas of primary rainforest in the tropics having been wiped out because of it, and with the forest goes the native wildlife. Malaysia and Indonesia are by far the worst affected regions with more than a quarter of Indonesian jungle having been lost to the palm oil industry in recent years.
These areas are home to some of the most unique habitats on Earth that shelter species found nowhere else in the world including Proboscis Monkeys, Clouded Leopards and of course, the iconic Orang-utan. All the species found in the regions have been pushed into smaller and smaller areas of their once vast natural habitat, leading to a drastic decline in population numbers.
Despite efforts by many to boycott products that contain palm oil completely, the industry has grown and grown but it has always been difficult to correctly identify the many products that actually contain it as it is listed simply as vegetable oil in product ingredients lists. This latest legislation however means that these problems will become a thing of the past.
Here at A-Z Animals we have been running our Palm Oil Campaign for the past few years which petitioned to change the EU legislation so that companies would have to list palm oil as palm oil. We are delighted to say that this latest change has come much sooner than anyone really expected and would like to thank all 18,797 of you that supported the campaign by signing our online petition.
We can only hope that now the sole use of sustainable palm oil will become top on people's list of priority's in order to try and protect the tropical habitats and all of the beautiful animals that live there.