Two heads are better than one. As leading producers of palm oil, Indonesia and Malaysia are rightly coordinating efforts to combat unjustified negative perceptions about the industry. All this while, the two governments and industry associations have acted independently to limit restrictions on palm oil. They have also worked to sway public perception with reasoned debate.
On Nov 21, 2015, Malaysian Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Abdul Razak and Indonesian President Joko Widodo agreed to establish the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC). By joining forces, both countries have an opportunity to exert their dominance on the market, and to influence the harmonisation of sustainability standards as well as the competitiveness of palm oil.
The palm oil industry has withstood unwarranted initiatives over the last few years. These actions have included legislative proposals tabled in major markets, as well as anti-palm oil campaigns championed by biased NGOs and economic operators.
In the EU, the most direct anti-palm oil legislative proposals have occurred in France. Most notably, in November 2012, the Social Affairs Committee of the French Senate introduced an amendment to the French social security budget law for 2013 that would have imposed an additional excise tax of EUR 300 per tonne of palm oil, copra and palm kernel oil for use in human food. This tax would have also applied to imported food containing these products.
The attempted justification was that such products are harmful to health in that they allegedly contribute to obesity and cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, the French Senate rejected the proposal by 186 votes to 155 votes.
More recently, the French Parliament debated the adoption of a ‘simplified’ nutrition labelling scheme that would take into account the caloric, fat, saturated fats, sugar and salt content of food, and combine the results on a five-point scale with dots coloured green, yellow, orange, pink or red. The scheme is included in a draft French Public Health Act, which is still under debate.
In addition, the French industry has been actively pursuing initiatives that would discriminate against the palm oil industry’s access to the EU market. With regard to the ‘simplified’ nutrition labelling scheme, members of the French Trade and Retailing Federation such as Auchan, Carrefour, Casino, Monoprix and Système U presented their own proposal to various ministries and consumer associations at a meeting organised by the Ministry of Health on Oct 27, 2015.
The proposal is called Aquellefréquence (‘how frequently’, in English), and specifies an algorithm for classifying food products by four colours (green, blue, amber and purple), depending on how often they should be consumed.
The UK had introduced a comparable colour-coded nutritional labelling system in 2013, referred to as ‘traffic-light’ labelling scheme. However, in October 2014, the European Commission formally opened proceedings against the UK due to concerns that the scheme is more trade restrictive than necessary.
Several manufacturers and retailers in the EU, particularly in France and Belgium, have also adopted the practice of including ‘no palm oil’ or ‘palm oil-free’ labels on certain products. These campaigns have been waged both for alleged nutritional and environmental reasons. However, the adoption of colour-coded nutrition labelling schemes and the use of ‘free from’ labels are arguably a violation of the EU’s Food Information to Consumers Regulation (FIR).
The FIR has mandatory nutrition labelling requirements, including the obligation for food products to include information on the caloric, fat, saturated fats, sugar and salt content of food. In addition, the specific origin of vegetable oils must be indicated in the list of ingredients of pre-packaged foods. As such, negative labelling indicating information that is already mandatorily provided on the product (in the positive), is clearly duplicative, redundant and misleading.
