The palm oil industry, in response to criticisms from environmental groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) that palm oil was not grown in a sustainable manner, had initiated the formation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which the set out stringent audit procedures and certifying processes to encourage its member plantations to grow the crop in a sustainable manner. This effort to be good corporate citizens meant inevitably that the sustainably grown palm oil would carry a small price premium.

However, in an interview with Reuters recently, Malaysian Palm Oil Council Chief Executive Yusof Basiron pointed out that buyers have shown little interest in paying an eight percent premium for palm oil certified for being produced at a lower cost to the environment.

"We have been led down the path of false hope in selling environmentally certified palm oil and now the buyers are not keen on paying for the premium," Basiron told Reuters in an interview.

“The market signal is very clear. We can supply at a premium but if buyers are clearly not interested, the palm oil suppliers will have to change tack. This is still a business, after all.”

In the view of Deforestation Watch, until and unless palm oil critics are willing to put their money where their mouth is, the increasingly shrill criticism of palm oil remains just that – empty shrill criticism that is calculated to distract and confuse, rather than to offer concrete workable solutions to the problem at hand.

Perhaps Basiron is right when he says: ““It’s clear that all these demands from the NGOs to be environmentally sustainable, which we obviously have been for many years and decades, is just a trade barrier in disguise!” THE END