Palm Oil

Palm oil is probably the best example of a product that would be considered vegan, and that yet does almost as much damage as animal products.

The damage it causes easily classifies it as one of the worst things in the world. It's less bad than animal agriculture, but not by much.

The oil is produced from the flesh of the palm fruit and the kernel (once crushed).

Deforestation and environmental damage

Palm oil agriculture is the cause of a lot of deforestation, and the demand keeps increasing. Approximately 85-90% of all palm oil is produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, and it's estimated that 1/3 of all vegetable oil used in the world is palm oil.

That high demand, and the constant increment of it, leads to a very intensive agriculture in Malaysia and Indonesia, where space has to be made clear in order for palm oil plantations to be expanded. Those areas are also covered for the major part by rainforests, which are the only place to raze in order to plant palm trees.

To put this into context, we can take the island of Borneo, Indonesia, as an example. It's the third largest island in the world, with a surface of roughly 750'000 square kilometers, which is about three times the size of all of Oregon (roughly 250'000 square kilometers).

The island is home to one of the oldest rainforests, which covers most of the island--for about 430'000 square kilometers--, and 47% of its deforestation (since the year 2000) is due to palm oil. Over 42'000 square kilometers (about 10% of its total rainforests, and almost a fifth of the state of Oregon) were razed to make space exclusively for palm oil monocoltures.

This is just one example, in one island. A more detailed view of the island's deforestation can be found at: https://atlas.cifor.org/borneo/#en

Most of the deforestation in Indonesia happens illegally (roughly 80%), and it's estimated by the World Wildlife Fund that every single hour an area equivalent to that of 300 football fields of rainforests gets razed to the ground to make space for palm oil plantation.

At this pace, the last of our rainforests will soon be completely destroyed.

The greenhouse gases from burning all the vegetation are so bad that now Indonesia is the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter (after the US and China).

Local people and animal suffering caused by the deforestation and burning fumes

It's estimated that about 45 million people live in forests in Indonesia alone. The deforestation process caused by demand of palm oil is threatening their homes and survival, and is responsible for over 5'000 human rights disputes and countless people losing their places.

The greenhouse gas emission from burning all the vegetation, especially in Indonesia, have formed a toxic haze in South East Asia. This haze expands over hundreds of kilometers, and it has spread to nearby countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, the south of Thailand and the Philippines.

In all of the mentioned places, the haze has caused a significant deterioration in air quality. It reached hazardous levels in 2015 in Singapore, to the point where schools and other facilities were forced to close, while in other places people were forced to be locked indoors because of the hazardous air quality outside.

"Besides irritating the respiratory tract and the eyes, pollutants in the haze can cause serious long-term damage to health.

The indices used to measure air quality in the region usually measure particulate matter (PM10), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone.

PM2.5 is considered the most dangerous as it can enter deeper into the lungs. It has been associated with causing respiratory illnesses and lung damage." [1]

Most importantly, the constant greenhouse emissions are believed to be responsible for over 100'000 premature deaths every year in South East Asia, while the 2015 haze caused over 500'000 respiratory ailments in people.

The amount of deforestation that palm oil causes also translates into a significant amount of wild animals' habitats destruction, and consequently their suffering and death.

Notably, over 50'000 orangutans have died on the islands of Bormeo and Sumatra because of palm oil deforestation. The orangutans whose habitats have been destroyed often go to nearby villages and oil plantations in search of food, where they're killed or captured and kept as pets.

On top of orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos are also constantly and increasingly threatened and in danger of being wiped out.

Palm oil’s fungibility and unsustainability

"fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are essentially interchangeable, and each of its parts is indistinguishable from another part" [2]

What that means is that no matter the source or the way it's acquired, palm oil is the same and interchangeable--whether it would be from a 'sustainable' source, or not.

'Sustainable' palm oil land is often referred to as already deforested areas where palm trees for palm oil are grown, where no further damage would be done.

The reason why 'sustainability' isn't there for palm oil, and the reason why additional palm oil demand always results in a problem, is that while the demand of palm oil may increase or decrease, the supply of 'sustainable' palm oil is still virtually the same amount-- as the amount of 'sustainable' land for palm oil wouldn't grow if demand grows, and instead more rainforests would have to be destroyed to make space. Some rules for certification require best practices that may increase yield slightly, but it's not clear how much this wouldn't already be done to maximize profit from those lands and it wouldn't make the whole amount sustainable even if it could be shown to only be done for that certification (more on this later).

Here is a simplified explanation of why additional demand of palm oil can't be sustainable, regardless of the source:

• There is X amount of tropical land currently available for cultivation of palm oil.
• X amount of land can grow X1 amount of tropical product.
• If demand for tropical products is X1, there's no problem.
• If demand for all tropical products is greater than X1, let's say X1 + Y1, then an Y amount of rainforest gets burnt down in order to fill the difference of demand between X1 and X1 + Y1.

To give a more specific example:

Let's say you're using 'sustainable' palm oil. You use 1,000 tons of it a year. That tonnage is grown within the confines of X, the land currently available.

But other people still want palm oil, and are willing to use palm oil from the land produced by burning the rainforest. They have no particular desire for the rainforest to be burnt to produce it, but they don't really care either way. To them it's 100% fungible, same thing.

The only reason they're burning down the rainforest to produce it, is because you, the person using 1,000 tons of palm oil grown on existing land, are already using up all of the other palm oil. If you didn't use that palm oil, they wouldn't simply throw it away. They'd sell it to somebody else. Now somebody else has more oil, and doesn't need to go through the trouble of burning down the rainforest to get it.

Therefore, if you were to use 'sustainable' palm oil, it would actually make no difference--as you would just take that source away from someone else instead, who would then be forced to acquire it from an unsustainable source.

To read more about this, check out the discussion on the PV Forum. [3]

Is palm oil healthy?

Palm oil is full of saturated fats, which increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Palm oil is 49.3% saturated fats, while palm kernel oil is 81.5% saturated fats.

Unlike alternative oils such as canola oil which provide essential fatty acids, palm oil is also empty calories, meaning that it contains close to zero nutrients while also being high in calories--which means it's a useless food to add to your diet, taking the daily caloric space of an otherwise healthier food that would give you nutrients instead.

Just 1 cup of palm oil contains almost 2000 kcal (close to the average daily caloric need of a person), while also giving you nothing useful, except for some vitamin E.

Palm oil is therefore one of the most unhealthy ingredients you can use.

[Please add discussion on Fatty acid ratios, comparing less bad saturated fatty acids like lauric acid to coconut oil]

Conclusions, where palm oil is found, and how to avoid it

Palm oil is mainly divided in three categories:

• Processed foods: roughly 71%
• Consumer products (such as certain soaps, cosmetics, detergents and candles): roughly 24%
• Energy sector: roughly 5%

Palm oil demand is responsible for major environmental destruction, dangerous air pollution, constant animals' deaths and significant humans' rights issues (where indigenous people living in the forests have nowhere to go).

Therefore, it's in our future's best interest to do our best to avoid palm oil whenever possible.

While little can be done to reduce the demand of palm oil in the energy sector -- don't use palm oil based biodiesel if it is available to you -- the majority of the impact comes through food.

Sometimes something can be done about the consumer products such as soaps and candles by looking for labels that say they're palm oil free. This is not always possible, but using palm-oil-free products whenever possible is a good step.

When it comes to processed foods including palm oi, it's a little easier to avoid palm oil and make the biggest impact in palm oil demand, by simply buying something else instead.

When buying food, it isn't always as simple as reading the product's ingredients since palm oil may be unscrupulously hidden under labels like "vegetable oil", but checking if it has 'palm oil' or 'palm kernel oil' listed in the ingredients (particularly higher up on the list) is a good start, and choosing something different from the shelf if it does (or preparing things at home for those who can). Food also makes up for the biggest amount of palm oil (over 2/3 of all palm oil), so trying to use palm-oil-free foods makes the biggest impact when trying to reduce the demand.

It's important that we put effort in trying to use palm-oil-free products and especially foods, for the sake of both humans and non-human animals, and everybody's future. It's also an important way to show that we're not dogmatic in our ethical practice in blindly calling all plant foods fine and all animal foods bad -- things aren't always that simple, and palm oil is a great conversation starter to help non-vegans who may be critical of apparent vegan dogmatism see that reason and evidence of consequence are the most important criteria in ethics.

Palm oil alternatives

Palm oil has a relatively unique as a butter replacement which often makes it useful in processed foods and popular among vegans for home use and baking.

Transgenic algae produced palm oil

Interesterified fully hydrogenated (soybean, etc.) oil

Coconut oil

Coconut cream

Cocoa butter

Non-oil replacements for baking

Truly sustainable Palm oil

Increasing production is the only way to break the supply-demand imbalance and solve the fungibility problem. If we introduce means (ultimately more expensive than is economically viable in the current non-sustainable market) to farm palm oil that produce more yield or produce it on land that didn't destroy forests that could introduce genuinely sustainable palm oil.

Considering the plans to increase production of palm oil, both a lower demand and a way to increase yield are desperately needed.

Nigeria plans to increase the production of palm oil from the current 600'000 tons a year to 5'000'000 tons a year by 2017. [4]

Similarly, Indonesia is currently increasing its palm oil production enormously, going from 35 million tons in 2019 to 42 millions tons in 2020. [5]

As you can see on the picture on right, palm oil is in accelerating production.

GMOs and breeding techniques are currently being used and improved to increase the yield of palm oil. [6] [7] However, progress so far has been made only marginally in comparison with the increase of demand.