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By Emily Mosher
Have you ever eaten a potato chip? A cookie? How about washing your hair, ever use shampoo? Over 50 percent of packaged foods in grocery stores contain palm oil, a product derived originally from the jungles of West Africa. The oil is taken from the flesh of the palm oil fruit, by pressing the seeds together and gathering the chemicals collected from this process. The problem with this common ingredient, is that the plants that the oil comes from can only be found in jungles, jungles where non-human animals, specifically orangutans, live and depend on these trees to survive.
The History
Palm oil is retrieved from the fruit of a certain kind of palm tree, most commonly known as an Elaeis guineensis-or African oil palm. This tree was introduced into South America during the time of popular slave trade, around 1763. The tree resembles similar crops such as cocoa, coffee, and tea, but the genetic origin is much different. Created by accidental mixing of four palm seeds, the Elaeis guineensis was born. Since then, the oil palm industry has been contained to mostly Indonesia and Malaysia, but can range from anywhere in the tropical climates between 10°N and 10°S.
The Process
As I am sure, like myself before research, most are unfamiliar with the process of how to collect palm oil from these trees.
First off, is the harvesting of the seeds. Palm oil, as stated earlier comes from the fruits on these palm trees that grow in the jungles of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Colombia. The entire branch will be cut down when the fruit is ripe and is then sent to the factories to begin. The next step in the process, is called the sterilization stage. This is when the fruit goes into a pressure cooker-like oven, and is heated until the fruit is softened and the seeds can easily be separated from the rest of the fruit. Threshing is the next phase combined with the pressing. First, the recently separated and collected fruit is tipped onto a threshing machine, where it rotates and helps the detachment of fruits from the pile and drops it onto the conveyer belt below to be pressed. Then, after a machine presses the fruit, the extracted juice from being squeezed is mixed with fruit particles, water, sand, and dirt. From there, it is sent to the clarification station to remove the course fibers and excess dirt. The oil is then pumped to storage tanks for sale as “crude palm oil”. Above steps are taken from palmoilmill.co.nz The Impact
This process and ingredient found in everyday items such as lipstick, detergent, packaged bread, and even biodiesel wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t the number one cause of deforestation and the killing of orangutans!! According to One Green Planet, agricultural expansion, and the increase in global demand for palm oil are the driving industrial-scale producers to clear forests. Indonesia was named the “Fastest Forest Destroyer” in the 2008 Guinness World Records largely due to deforestation to produce palm oil. Even when efforts are made to heal the tarnished grounds, the soil isn’t able to produce the same was it once was. The introduction of palm oil plantations in the Indonesian and Malaysian jungles, have been a disaster for endangered wildlife such as orangutans. Not only are the plantation operators cutting down the natural jungle that these primates need to live in to survive, but they are adding in massive air pollution problems for them as well. The draining, burning, and conversion of peat swamp forest to palm oil has led to Indonesia becoming the world’s third largest contributor of carbon to the worlds atmosphere. This means, that these monkeys are already struggling to relocate to find new homes, but they can’t breathe either. These palm oil producers are directly choosing to get rid of primary forests, instead of already degraded grasslands because they won’t receive enough money with damaged lands. This means that these companies are choosing to destroy rich and biodiverse areas of natural rainforest to produce palm oil, rather than using soil and other areas of the jungle that can no longer grow natural jungle vegetation. These companies aren’t even considering the homes that they are destroying or the fresh air they are reducing for these orangutans. An estimated 80% of orangutan’s homes have been destroyed within the last 20 years, with an average of 6,000 orangutan deaths each year. Then, add in the fact that these orangutans are now suffocating, homeless, and now starving. When they come across these plantations and see food, the starving orangutans end up getting killed in brutal forms because the plantation operators are seeing them as pests rather than the native families that they are.
Ways to Help!
Last Words
The number of orangutans are steadily decreasing with the consistent drive for palm oil productions. The only way to help these native families is to help protect their rightful homes. By protesting and rebelling against the use of palm oil and by specifically choosing items that do not contain palm oil, the demand will decrease and hopefully the jungle forest will increase. These non-human animals need your voice to speak for them, and to help them as a species, rise again to leave the endangered species list. Fight the fight and resist palm oil induced products!!
References
Deforestation-Free Palm Oil (2014). (2014, March 01). Retrieved March 23, 2017, from http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/stop-deforestation/palm-oil-scorecard-2014#.WNQlxoWcFNZ Elaeis guineensis (African oil palm). (2013, July 24). Retrieved March 23, 2017, from http://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/20295 Goodman, L. K., & Sharma, A. R. (2015, April). Fries, Facewash, Forests. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/ucs-palm-oil-scorecard-2015.pdf J. (2011, March 25). The Extraction of Palm oil. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://palmoilmill.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48%3Athe-extraction-of-palm-oil&catid=47%3Affb-reception&Itemid=71 Lam, P. (2013, August 14). 5 Big Causes of Deforestation and How You Can Stop It. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/5-big-causes-of-deforestation-and-how-you-can-stop-it/ McCluskey, S. (2001, January 01). 6 Ways to Avoid Palm Oil | Endangered Orangutans and Deforestation | Gaiam Life. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://www.gaiam.com/discover/193/article/6-ways-avoid-palm-oil/ NAMES FOR PALM OIL. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2017, from http://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/names-for-palm-oil.html Palm Oil. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2017, from https://www.orangutan.org.au/about-orangutans/palm-oil/ Photographers, I. L. (2015, December 11). A Guide to Saving One of the Last Great Ecosystems. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/10/a-guide-to-saving-one-of-the-last-great-ecosystems/ The Effects of Palm Oil. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://orangutan.org/rainforest/the-effects-of-palm-oil/ Which Everyday Products Contain Palm Oil? (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil AUTHOR BIO
Emily Mosher has been an avid non-human animal lover since her first breaths from the womb. From dogs, to cats, guinea pigs, turtles, lizards, and many, many fish, she has been surrounded her entire life. But now, she wants to learn. Learn what makes them unique? What makes them different from other species? But her latest question has had the biggest impact, WHAT CAN SHE DO TO HELP?! She is currently in the process of earning her zoology degree with a pursuit of a veterinarian license, and she is on the hunt for the information she needs to make a difference in non-human animals lives every day.
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This is a website about nonhuman animals, written by human animals taking a Society and Animals class at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Archives
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