
Cadbury ‘pushing orangutans towards extinction by wrecking habitat for palm oil’ - dsr12
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/orangutans-palm-oil-habitat-rainforest-cadbury-mondelez-oreos-indonesia-greenpeace-a8630801.html
======
goodmachine
Kraft are a notably shitty company, as is Mondelez, the subsidiary owner here.

2010: One week after they acquire Cadbury the new owners sack 400 workers,
despite pledging otherwise in order to get the deal waved through.

2016: They further renege on promises to use Fairtrade cocoa beans... but keep
the logo on products to fool consumers.

2017: Mondelez pay £0 tax on profits of £185m in the UK.

I wouldn't give my dog their chocolate, but the larger point is that this is
not the kind of company we or the orangutans need around.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249728/Cadbury-
sac...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249728/Cadbury-
sacks-400-workers-Kraft-breaks-promise-shut-factory.html)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-
cho...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-chocolate-
fairtrade-logo-scheme-at-risk-mondelez-international-a7443226.html)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-
cho...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-chocolate-
mondelez-no-corporation-tax-paid-uk-profit-a8578951.html)

~~~
kevinconaway
> I wouldn't give my dog their chocolate

You really shouldn’t give your dog any chocolate.

It is considered poisonous to most dogs

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Mostly.

It’s theobromine in chocolate. Present in most chocolate, but concentrated in
baking or dark. It’s barely present at all in most medicore milk chocolates
like the ones kraft makes large scale.

A average chocolate bar and and average dog won’t get poison effects from
theobromine, but could have a really bad reaction to that make calories and
sugars. An average dog would need multiple average chocolate bars.

Very much true for baking or dark chocolate though. A dark bar and a small dog
can be a bad combination. Some dogs show a fair resistance to it but could
still see liver damage.

~~~
cglace
My jack Russell got into a pound of tootsie rolls. Found her twitching on the
ground outside. Took her to the vet and she was put on an IV and she lived to
16.

~~~
logfromblammo
I once had a huge black Labrador Retriever (45 kg, and tall, not fat) that got
up onto the kitchen countertop and ate almost an entire 32oz box of chocolate-
almond bark. The only ill effect he apparently suffered from it was getting
yelled at. Some of the other grossly inappropriate things he had ever eaten
include a 60W incandescent light bulb, two toilet cleaner tank pucks, and the
blue dog vomit caused by eating toilet cleaner pucks.

This was not an animal with discerning tastes. Nevertheless, sweet milk
chocolate doesn't have a lot of theobromine in it, and he was rather large for
a lab. Didn't live to 16, but larger breeds usually don't.

~~~
tjr
I have heard that for an N-pound dog, it would take approximately N ounces of
dark chocolate to be fatal.

That's encouraging, because such a scenario seems very unlikely, even by
accident, but I do not intentionally give my dog any chocolate at all.

------
kokey
To put this into perspective: palm oil for biofuel and heating currently makes
up around 60% of the palm oil imports into Europe.

Greenpeace has been targeting European food companies over palm oil where the
majority of the increased palm oil demand from Europe that has directly caused
the clearing of rainforest to meet this demand, has been for biofuels because
the EU had a mandatory biofuels component in fuel. This biofuels policy was
driven by anti-nuclear organisations like Greenpeace, and yet they blame food
producers whose demand has actually been sustainable without the need for
massive clearing out of forests before biofuels came into the picture.

The EU has now moved to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel, but it's only
being phased out slowly until 2030. This is being replaced by rapeseed oil in
Europe. Unfortunately protecting the seeds of this crop was one of the biggest
uses of neonicotinoid pesticides which is blamed for the decline in bee
populations. The EU now also put a moratorium on using these pesticides so now
older and more harmful pesticides are being used instead and with the
increased demand I am worried about the impacts we'll see in the future.

Yet Greenpeace targets food companies. It's because Greenpeace is a political
organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation and they just use the
environment just as a tool to that end. They target retail brands while
staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or
through badly conceived regulation.

~~~
CathyWest
I just don't understand what Greenpeace has against nuclear power. The
Chernobyl disaster has very well demonstrated that even the worst case
scenario, while it sucks for people, is not at all bad for the environment.

~~~
ryanmercer
It doesn't matter anyway, nuclear power isn't a solution. At best it's a
bandaid.

First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those
involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and
non-lung cancers.

Second, it takes about 10 metric tons of raw uranium to make enough low
enriched uranium to generate 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. If you
take known reserves, and estimated undiscovered reserves, we only have 200ish
years worth at current energy demands.

Energy demands increase over time, for example we are generating 4x the energy
we were in the early 1970s and more and more people are being able to afford
electronic devices, if you go adding electric vehicles in worthwhile numbers
you'll see a rapid spike as well so if we switched the entire world over to
uranium based power, we might have 50 years worth.

Even if you then use the waste from those reactors, via a different process
like YC funded Oklo Inc is attempting to do using nuclear waste as an energy
source, you still might only buy the world a century of clean nuclear energy.

~~~
jschwartzi
The amount of fuel that you're quoting assumes that we don't ever reprocess
the spent fuel. While the US doesn't do this due to proliferation concerns,
it's possible to dramatically increase the longevity of nuclear power by doing
so. This is likely what Oklo is doing.

All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than
nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop
storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.

------
smackay
The reason for the moral outrage aimed at Cadbury comes from their early
history,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury).
It's a great example of the Quaker model of doing business where social
improvement was part of the mission of the company.

Now that the evil Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods) owns them, it's open season
on the not so nice things that modern business gets up to. However given that
palm oil is used in everything it's a little cheap of The Independent to try
and manufacture outrage against what was a beloved, British institution.

Just avoid products with palm oil, though that's getting rather hard to do.
Don't bother wasting your time with this kind of junk-food journalism.

~~~
Freak_NL
> Just avoid products with palm oil, though that's getting rather hard to do.

It's infeasible without spending a lot of time studying the tiny print on the
packaging of almost every item you buy apart from produce, meat, bread, and
dairy. And even then some people will end up having to rigorously change their
shopping pattern. This is in addition to all the other environmental and
ethical issues in the supermarket: animal welfare guarantees, chocolate that
doesn't screw the farmers over, sustainable fishing, local produce, and of
course choosing to shop with the goal of eating healthy in that hall of
temptations.

This is not something consumers can fix buy voting with their wallets. It's
just too abstract: palm oil is used in so many products that have no strong
link to that issue (unlike meat and seafood).

~~~
llukas
If is perfectly feasible. How often do you buy new products?

I skipped major part of sweets that I liked and that is mostly it. Wasn't big
problem either.

But saddest part is that in EU boycott worked and it changed nothing due to
use of palm oil in biofuels -
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/how-palm-
oil-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/how-palm-oil-ban-has-
made-the-eu-a-dirty-word-in-malaysia)

~~~
hedvig
Well, probably a majority of us agree that this can be controlled from the top
and not have to cross our fingers and rely on low-informed consumers to change
things.

------
benjamoon
This story is super relevant in the uk at the moment because one of our super
markets (Iceland) made a Christmas advert about Palm oil and it was banned for
being too political. Worth watching:
[https://youtu.be/oA10-oZi4Xc](https://youtu.be/oA10-oZi4Xc)

~~~
dtf
It's been an incredibly astute comms strategy from Greenpeace. They made this
film, then did a deal with Iceland (who were keen to reposition themselves as
a supermarket with green credentials). Both parties admitted they knew it
would be "bannned" by Clearcast. Greenpeace are now riding the inevitable
public outrage by drip releasing their palm oil research to put huge public
pressure on big brands. It's very impressive.

~~~
arethuza
And we might reduce palm oil consumption and everyone might eat less sweets.
Win-win!

------
evincarofautumn
I don’t mean to evangelise too hard, but this is yet another reason to keep
kratom legal in the US. Last I knew, over 30% of the world’s kratom is
consumed by the US, and most of that is from Indonesia, specifically Borneo.
Kratom is an understory crop that can be cultivated without clear-cutting as
is done for palm oil; and if kratom growers can’t afford to stay in business
because the US demand dries up, you can bet they’ll turn to palm oil and
rubber, leading to more deforestation and more habitat loss for orangutans.
This is in addition to what I believe is clear potential for kratom to be
instrumental in fighting the epidemic of opioid painkiller and heroin abuse.

------
lozenge
In case anybody is wondering, Cadbury started using palm oil _before_ being
acquired by Mon delez.

[https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1801250/new-
zealands-a...](https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1801250/new-zealands-
auckland-zoo-bars-cadbury-chocolate-palm-oil-protest)

------
aussieguy1234
When I buy chocolate or any cocoa products, I always look for the UTZ
certified logo or some linkage to another fair trade organisation. Cadbury
didn't have any of this so I buy other brands for ethical reasons. The
chocolate is usually better anyway.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Cadbury chocolate always was pretty poor quality but it seems to have gone
even further downhill since they became part of Kraft / Mondelez.

~~~
rleigh
It's gone from being OK-but-nothing-special to a brown-wax-cake-topping like
Hershey's. Inedible and worthless. I've gone to more premium dark chocolate
from a local company (Mackies) or Lindt. Costs more but it's worth it for
actually tasting like chocolate and being made with proper ingredients.

------
Balgair
Orangs are just amazing creatures.

I remember 'playing' with a juvenile and a large male once, during a slow day
at the zoo. They were behind a big glass wall, there was a flat-screen built
into the center of the glass along the floor, kinda like an 'n' in shape. The
male was mostly uninterested, but the juvenile was just so curious about
everything. The little guy was trying to make a bed/nest on some of the gym
equipment. Eventually, he saw me looking up at him and came over to the glass,
where I was standing. I decided to play a bit of a game of hide and seek. I'd
duck behind the flat-screen, and wiggle my fingers up above it, and then
myself. The little dude seemed to really like it, swinging about and having a
good time with hide-n-peek. The huge, jowly male took an interest too, maybe
due to the activity of the juvenile. The giant male and I would 'hide' a bit,
he behind the various objects in the cage, I in the viewing room with it's
benches and educational boards. The juvenile would point us out/tag us and
then swing off on some ropes and such. If the juvenile was a human toddler, I
swear he'd be squealing in delight. It was just an amazing 20/25 minutes until
other people walked in.

Those beasts are just stunningly intelligent for animals.

------
cyberferret
I have read that Ferrero (makers of Ferrero Roche chocolates among others) are
harvesting palm oil in a sustainable manner - however even that gives me
pause, because as far as I know, palm oil plantations are not really
sustainable per se?

The palm trees themselves are fast growing but tend to deplete the ground soil
they are on of all available nutrients very quickly, meaning that really
nothing else can be planted in their place for many, many years and can be
expected to grow.

It is really a 'scorched earth' type plantation in more ways than one. I
really don't believe there can be a sound 'sustainable' model of farming palm
oil like most other plant resources.

~~~
gpderetta
And Nutella. Apparently palm oil is an irreplaceable component of its recipe.

~~~
cyberferret
I believe Nutella is manufactured by Ferrero as well. I stopped eating it,
though I love it, because of the initial backlash about palm oil many years
ago.

Then, when they said they were going forward with 'sustainable' palm oil
production, I started buying it again, but having second thoughts again
because of the points raised in my original post above.

------
AndrewSChapman
In Australia Cadbury decided to remove palm oil from their plain dairy milk
blocks in reaction to outrage caused by talk-back radio. Sadly the outrage
wasn't about environmental devestation, but palm oil related health concerns.

------
vbuwivbiu
like most too-big-to-fail corporations, their products are shit and they're
fucking the planet as they make them

if you want chocolate, there are many superb fair-trade brands which use only
(> 70%) chocolate and sugar

------
elhudy
I was in Tawau a few years back and bused to Semporna. Generally when
traveling within a new country I'm fascinated by the surrounding sights, and
keep my eyes locked out the window. I got bored on this drive because it was
oil palms as far as the eye could see. It was like corn fields in Nebraska.

~~~
grecy
Same story in massive swaths of West Africa.

------
jrvarela56
Is there an easy way of knowing which products I should boycott?

I know this is way to open ended to be actionable (based on what ethical
standards, what kinds of products, etc) but could you share how you go about
boycotting companies you consider not in compliance with your morals?

~~~
NickM
Individual action is unlikely to be effective in this case. For every person
that cares enough and is aware enough to boycott these products, there are a
thousand other people who either don't know, don't care, or can't afford to
take the time and effort to change their behavior over something like this.

If you want to make an impact, look toward political solutions; raise
awareness among your friends and family, write to your representatives, send a
letter to your local newspaper, etc. etc. The only reason companies are
overexploiting these resources is because it's profitable; a small tax or
tariff could tip the scales in a much bigger way than your own individual
consumer habits ever will.

~~~
jrvarela56
But if it's easier for 1 person to boycott, doesn't that make it easier for
many people to do it too?

I agree with what you're saying: spreading the word and trying to have an
impact on the system as a whole will help solve the problem.

What if I make it easier for myself to boycott and then communicate to others
it would be easy for them too? Feel like this goes along the lines of
solutions where you first brute-force-first/bottom-up/do-things-that-
don't-scale and then spread the working solution.

------
martiuk
Palm oil is a cheap substitute for trans fats in most processed food, so
should we return to animal fats?

I think so, and not just for the orangutans.

------
etaioinshrdlu
I have also seen palm oil sold as a health food. It is actually very tasty...

