By Jed Lanyon
Healesville Sanctuary will no longer sell Cadbury or Natural Confectionary Company products.
Zoos Victoria vows to take a stand for wildlife under threat from manufacturers that refuse to come clean on the origins of the palm oil in their products.
The crackdown comes after an audit by Zoos Victoria on all food products sold at Healesville Sanctuary, Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo to ensure that parent companies are using, or committed to sourcing, only the highest standard of wildlife-friendly sustainable palm oil within the next four years.
Zoos Victoria said that all product suppliers, including Cadbury’s and Natural Confectionery’s parent company Mondelez, were given time to comply with the sourcing standards of Zoos Victoria’s Palm Oil Policy. Those that haven’t complied have been removed from the shelves.
Zoos Victoria CEO Dr Jenny Gray expects a groundswell of public support for the organisation’s new social media campaign #LabelPalmOilAlready.
“Consumer research shows that 95 per cent of Australians want clear mandatory labelling of palm oil, so they can make an informed decision on what they consume,” Dr Gray said.
“It’s pretty simple, we all just want to know what is in the products we consume and how the use of these ingredients affects the habitat of the precious wildlife we care about.”
Zoos Victoria states that the rapid expansion of palm oil production is associated with the destruction of habitat for some of the world’s most vulnerable species, including orang-utans, tigers, elephants and gibbons.
Dr Gray said there was still so much confusion about sustainable and unsustainable palm oil, which could be resolved through mandatory labelling of product ingredients, including the removal of the umbrella term ‘vegetable oil’.
“The Victorian Government supported mandatory labelling as a priority back in 2016, and yet we are still waiting for the Australian Government and other states to make the change. The wildlife under threat from deforestation for palm oil plantations can’t wait any longer,” Dr Gray said.
