In a clear sign that anti-palm oil lobbies are switching tack and are now using zoos to attack palm oil, within the past month 2 zoos have suddenly developed an interest in palm oil, launching spurious anti-palm oil campaigns.

Melbourne Zoo is the latest to join this merry band of short term anti-palm oil converts, with the launch next week of their ''Don't Palm us Off'' campaign.  Zoo visitors will be given postcards to send to Food Standards Australia New Zealand calling for clearer labelling of products containing allegedly unsustainably farmed palm oil.

This follows the Auckland Zoo’s action last month to remove Cadbury chocolate bars from its shelves after the confectionery maker moved to substitute some of the cocoa solids in its products with palm oil from South Asia plantations. Says the zoo's conservation officer, Peter Fraser: "We are advocates for wildlife. The biggest threat for animals is encroaching palm oil plantations."  The fact though that the Auckland Zoo is home to orangutans, gibbons and Sumatran tigers – the very species that are supposedly  under threat due to deforestation in South Asia is, of course, of no concern to the zoo.

What this selective voodoo hunt by both the Melbourne Zoo and the Auckland Zoo premised on conservation concerns surely ring hollow when we juxtapose the both zoos’ penchant for alarmism with their inexplicable silence over the annual killing of 100 million sharks!

In the view of Deforestation Watch, the real reason for both the zoos’ sudden new-found conservation conscience and this is a dead give-away of their true motives is the fact that “an estimated 40 per cent of Australian and New Zealand groceries contain palm oil but manufacturers are not required to list it as an ingredient, so most consumers are unwittingly buying products containing the oil - including detergent, shampoo, toothpaste, lipstick, chocolate, biscuits, snack bars, noodles and desserts”

The campaign follows the failed attempt last year of Mornington Peninsula mother Amanda Enright to get FSANZ to make palm oil use a labelling requirement. Ms Enright was told the matter was outside the authority's legal scope.

Whilst this would ordinarily be a non-event, considering the irony of orang utans which originally came from the island of Borneo and are now kept in the self-same zoos that have suddenly found a conservation zeal after keeping these unfortunate creatures in enclosures for the crass entertainment of the viewing public, the fact that the actions of the zoos smack of a planned and coordinated campaign raises the specter of an unseen hand providing the funding and financial incentives for the zoo's sudden discovery of their conservation conscience..

In conclusion, Deforestation Watch is compelled to ask whether it is precisely the extreme productivity of palm oil with the consequent low pricing and growing popularity with food manufacturers and biofuel/biodiesel producers that is at the heart of these anti-palm oil campaigns.  The distinct stench of payola is hanging strong in the air! THE END