Cadbury ‘pushing orangutans towards extinction by wrecking habitat for palm oil’
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
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.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-cho...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-cho...
You really shouldn’t give your dog any chocolate.
It is considered poisonous to most dogs
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.
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.
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.
In general, mammals are capable of metabolizing and/or eliminating nearly any foreign organic compound over a long enough timespan, thanks to the mechanisms of xenobiotic metabolism. The liver contains a large number of enzymes of the Cytochrome P450 (CYP) family, which are able to catalyze reactions with a wide variety of compounds as the first (and most critical) step of metabolism. These reactions typically make the compounds hydrophilic, making it possible for the kidneys to pick them up and eliminate them. However, different animals express the various CYP enzymes at different levels; some are much more effective at metabolizing certain compounds (e.g. theobromine) than others. So, if an animal lacks a certain CYP enzyme (or it is expressed at a very low level), they will also metabolize certain compounds much slower (other enzymes, which are less efficient, will have to do the job).
So, basically: dogs lack certain enzymes in their liver which means that they metabolize theobromine much slower than humans - but that doesn't mean they don't metabolize it at all.
They can, just not very well.
We can too, but not perfectly. To get a lethal dose of theobromine a healthy human adult would need to eat about 10Kg of milk chocolate in a very short space of time (less for dark chocolates).
For most small dogs a normal ~40g bar is enough to cause concern, if an even smaller dog (i.e. breads that are sometimes called "toy" dogs) consumes a standard bar you should take it to the vet immediately as that could likely be quickly fatal.
I like to believe her excessive food consumption throughout her life was training for this moment where she would need to metabolize poison.
Personally I think that should be treated in the same way as contempt of court and an arrest warrant should have been issued against her.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/23/mps-condemn...
Like in a few weeks or months, or maybe next parliamentary session. Who knows.
Kraft/Mondelez might be good at cut-throat capitalism, but many people in the UK (including myself) despise this type of nasty and unethical behaviour. Buying a company only to trash it completely is just not on.
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.
Here's a starter for 10:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e...
Interestingly the figure quoted here is half rather than 60%, and it seems the EU want to phase it out entirely, which might explain Greenpeace's "targeting of food companies" and relative lack of apparent interest in biofuels (assuming that's a thing).
What I'm interested in are the sources that the author is using so that I can read them, and then compare to searches I might conduct myself.[1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw
[1] https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-s...
Sometimes when you are honestly trying to convey some information, people who are contrary are just shouting you down. It's usually better to ignore them because otherwise you end up going down a rabbit hole of their choosing. But, at least for me, if I see that someone is genuinely interested in exploring the subject I'll usually go the extra mile and prepare the information I have. Sometimes it leads me to find out I'm wrong, and I'm always grateful for the prompting.
Agree. To me it almost feels like a pre-programmed response/reaction or, at best, something that might be said to try and be funny, which can be frustrating depending on the context.
Palm oil for biofuel/heating constitutes 55% of palm oil imports, but food and feedstock usage accounts for 40-45%, so it's still a significant area of use
Understandably a campaign in this particular area is going to be more visible to the end consumer because of the companies that it targets.
And everything is political.
Sure they campaigned against nuclear, but that doesn't mean they approve of whatever other means the EU has been using as an alternative, as they themselves say on their website[1].
I'm sure if they got their way we wouldn't have nuclear or "bad" biofuels, and would just be paying a higher tax rate to scale up our sustainable energy production. That the EU has been dropping nuclear power without that investment in sustainable energy isn't Greenpeace's fault.
1. https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Clim...
It is all very well to say that orangutans _should_ be more important than a standard of living, but in practice people will say one thing and vote in a completely different way when they are actually tested. Orangutan are not important compared to keeping families struggling between financially viable and non-viable on the good side of the margins.
We are generating 4x the electricity we were in just the early 1970s, that sort of increase isn't sustainable and we're already seeing consequences of our actions. Unless a fleet of alien ships show up in orbit and charitably give us a bunch of fusion reactors... we've got to start making some pretty radical changes in our lives.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
I keep saying "nuclear", you keep saying "no". So I'm not going to consider myself part of the problem.
Uhhhh, I never said no to nuclear. I said at best it's a bandaid.
We have a few decades to make some very considerable changes, maybe two centuries to find alternative means of energy (fusion, mining asteroids for PV and battery materials etc as there's a very finite amount of the materials needed for manufacturing batteries and panels on earth too).
People like to say nuclear is our savior but, at current energy production levels, with a moderate estimate for continued growth, there's maybe 100 years of fuel there. Nuclear just isn't a solution for the world's energy needs, it however is a GREAT solution for generating considerable amounts of power in small spaces (ice breakers, submarines) and for portable power for emergencies like with the Russian floating nuclear power stations (Google the Akademik Lomonosov).
At least you have not made the mistake of inclusion "waste" as a problem in the same post.
Breeder reactors solve this. Yes, fuel will be significantly more expensive because of them. But all these "issues" with nuclear (except capital intensivity, that will likely stay) will go away.
"Well, good," I think, "sounds like exactly what we need."
* Producing aluminium (Apple products) * Producing & storing food (Haber process is energy -> fertiliser @ ~1-2% of worlds energy, refrigeration will also be a big deal) * Transport (of food and goods) * Heating (probably a bigger deal in places like Europe)
Energy is secretly quite fungible - eg, we can burn fossil fuels directly for grid electricity and use grid electricity as a substitute for fossil fuels if the price differential between the two gets large.
If general energy costs go up, food prices go up. That is the most obvious link between energy prices and poverty, but there are other less clear ones.
Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a guaranteed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23.
This compares with the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant securing subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour.
Where did you get that from? Greenpeace has a history of working with corporations to improve their practices and promoting the efforts of corporations to engage in sustainable production:
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2...
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/libra...
This is necessary if they want public support because the general public tend to look at matters much further away then immediately under their nose as being nothing they can do anything significant about, so it is hard to get them engaged even if they actually care.
Furthermore, from a cynical sounding but unfortunately true PoV: if you can bring an issue down to "this product/company you deal with every day" many social influencers will jump on the band wagon even if they don't really care...
It is not specifically that they target retail brands over all other organisations, but that those are the campaigns that get most public pushing & traction so are the ones you are exposed to more commonly.
> while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.
This is demonstrably not true, and I shall prove my point by providing as many well researched references as you have for your assertion... :-)
Less facetiously: your own post contradicts this point by mentioning their strong opposition to nuclear power (while I understand their stance I disagree with being as dogmatic: it is dangerous but the danger is understood and (if well managed until other tech is more ready in a generation or two) offers a less damaging solution overall than other practical options in the near/middle term, and some arguments I've seen include significant scientific misunderstanding or misrepresentation).
A strong anti-nuclear stance is hardly just going after retail brands.
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.
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.
Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.
Heck if you actually factored in the externalities then coal/oil/gas would also not be economical.
"Meanwhile, global warming lurches ahead. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow. So do solar and wind power. But do you know how much of the world’s primary energy comes from fossil fuels today? It’s 81 percent—the same as in 2006."
I didn't check the numbers by myself, but it sounds reasonable: while renewable sources grow, the consumption grows as well. So maybe we need nuclear power too in addition to solar/wind/etc? I don't see too much alternatives around.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18411991
[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-we-nee...
Nuclear isn't an option, it's simply too expensive compared to renewables.
Here in The Netherlands there's pressure to close the last coal power stations. The liberals (i.e. Republicans minus the religious and racist blocks) have been pushing for new nuclear power stations only for the energy suppliers themselves to turn around and call them lunatics because renewables are better.
Sure, let's ignore energy storage and subsidies altogether. I would believe e.g. solar thermal in Spain to be cost-effective, but these empty claims of "cheap renewables" are tiring.
I think a lot of greens are wary of nuclear power as they see it as a front for nuclear weapons (don't forget the 'peace' in Greenpeace's name!).
Environmentalists generally advocate decentralised solutions that give people autonomy (e.g. rooftop solar). Nuclear power is basically the opposite of that.
Then they were against the dumping of nuclear waste at sea.
I don't get that either, seems like the ideal way to get rid of it. Cheap, secure and with negligible impact on people or the environment.
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.
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).
I just want a damn bag of cookie without any BS :(
Palm oil is barely fit for human consumption, and it tastes bad. When mass manufactured products are no longer fit for purpose, it's time to ditch them.
I do the same for bread as well. Just bought a 25kg sack of organic white flour which will keep me going for a few months. With practice, takes just 10 minutes to make a loaf of bread or some batch rolls (without a breadmaker). The taste, consistency and quality of it is again much better than any of the mass-produced stuff, which makes it worth that little bit of time to prepare.
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...
Only when it comes to food. It's impossible to ascertain the source of cleaning products' ingredients.
Also, if a product just mentions "vegetable fat" it's more than likely palm.
Particularly because it sidesteps the things the company actually did (areas razed to the ground include 25,000 hectares of habitations in Indonesia that are home to the critically endangered orangutan) while at the same putting the blame on consumers (just do xyz, why wouldn't you).
And who can forget those pesky journalists, reporting on stuff - how dare they.
IMO, this is exactly what illogical manufactured outrage looks like. We can place blame anywhere down the line: workers in Indonesia who personally work to produce palm oil; the company that hires those works; Mondelez for buying the palm oil; customers for eating Cadbury eggs. I'm being told to hold Mondelez morally responsible for the situation when they are not. They certainly have the most power to stop doing what they're doing. That doesn't stop another company from buying palm oil.
Ultimately, the Indonesian people need to care enough about their orangutans to protect them. Or everyone needs to stop buying palm oil.
The argument here is that Cadbury is effectively turning a blind eye (intentionally or negligently) to what their supplier is doing to meet demand. For an example of companies which actually do care about their responsibility all the way up and down the supply chain, go have a look at the Supplier Responsibility statements and reports put out by big companies like Samsung (https://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/sustainability/suppl...) and Apple (https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/).
It comes with the times, and it was just normal from an English empire perspective. Just saying, it's a matter of perspective I guess.
It's quite important not to confuse that given the history of prominent Scottish trading firms such as Jardine Matheson.
The grand parent didn't conflate Scotland and Britain. They conflated an English Empire with the British Empire.
England is a different sub-set of the British Isles.
Much of the commodities trade in South East Asia during the period referred to was controlled by powerful Scottish firms.
To talk about an "English Empire" like that is not a "local issue" it's just factually incorrect.
Summary: Stop calling Britain 'England'.
Yeah I know its a bit nitpicky and less of an issue but there you go :-)
Yes, it is.
> any more than its not wrong to call her the queen of canada or australia - it's part of her title,
Queen of Canada is one of her titles.
Queen of Australia is one of her titles.
Queen of England is not (Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is.)
Something along the lines of the following: If somebody asks me "who is the queen of scotland" I would answer the question - I assume that the asker is not asking about a specific title that was removed in 1707 but instead they want to inquire about the current monarch that holds control over that territory
I mean of course my thought process here is a bit rambly but I think you get where im going.
England and Scotland are subsets of Great Britain, both physically (on the island named Great Britain) and politically (both countries within the UK).
I think your point is they were very serious about treating well their company workers. I totally agree, it's just in the current perspective we would also care about supply chain and how the products are sourced.
> Cadbury was established in Birmingham, England in 1824, by John Cadbury who sold tea, coffee and drinking chocolate.
All their main businesses come from imported raw materials with heavy slavery involved. That's the times, it's no use faulting them for that retrospectively, I just don't agree calling them "ethical" now.
Their fair and ethical business practices set the standard for how good companies should operate. Cadbury would be horrified by the practices of Kraft/Mondelez. Both are capitalist enterprises, but there are good reasons Cadbury was held in high regard, and Kraft is not. The way Kraft have treated Cadbury and its workers is contemptible. I've not bought a single product from them since the takeover, and I'm by far from the only one.
Palm oil in everything is a Mondolez "innovation", along with lying about not closing the factory - a promise broken a week after takeover, and changing many recipes for the worse. I think it's the palm oil that gives American chocolate a distinctly greasy feel, and now some of that is being given to Cadbury too.
No problem, Aldi do perfect copies of how Cadbury Fruit and Nut and other bars used to be. So the copy is cheaper and better than the original now. They do good high cocoa chocolate too.
Unilever, meanwhile, has been praised by Greenpeace for being at the sustainable end of palm oil use. Though they don't do enough to preserve the planet they're at least giving it some board time. Seems more than adequate reason to criticise Mondolez and their bought up brands.
That might be a further nail in the coffin though as I've heard in the past almonds themselves are not great (need heat and lots of water?) whereas hazelnuts fall from the trees around here (south coast UK) and are wasted.
I think almonds do indeed need lots and lots of water.
Had the same film been 100% produced by Iceland, it wouldn't have been banned.
“The advert wasn’t approved by Clearcast as it was seen to be in support of a political issue,” a spokesperson for Iceland says.
-- source: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/iceland-advert-banned-christ...
'it was deemed to be "an advertisement inserted by or on behalf of a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature".'
'for Iceland to overcome the ruling, "Greenpeace needs to demonstrate it is not a political advertiser."'
--source: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/11/12/clearcast-clarifies-...
Sorry if my point was too specific but I think it's a worthwhile one to press:
The ad wasn't banned because it itself was political, had exactly the same creative been made by Iceland it wouldn't have been banned. It was banned because it was a re-purposed piece of content originally created by and used in partnership with a group deemed to be a politically-focused organisation.
(and actually, it's worth pointing out that Clearcast can't "ban" ads by themselves, that's the ASA in most cases - they just really advise as to whether they abide by the rules)
Given Greenpeace's status as an activist organisation, I can't bring myself to believe Iceland didn't expect this decision. Whether or not it was intentional, it's certainly achieved its purpose as an advert...
Fair comment.
Clearcast say the same: "The concerns of Clearcast and the broadcasters do not extend to the content or message of the ad, i.e. Clearcast does not consider the ad itself to be political."
The advert itself carries an important, but easy to gloss over, message.
They're exceptionally fortunate to now have a "Plan B" media maelstrom to help them cut through...
That's exactly what this is. It's obviously being use for a positive purpose here to advertise the use of palm oil, but they could very easily clarify the lack of clearance and address it, instead using that lack of clearance to their own ends.
Again, I'm not judging their morality in using this tactic to drive awareness of palm oil - but this is pretty much the dictionary definition of manufactured outrage, pushing the notion their story is being silenced, whilst knowingly ignoring the issue is actually about a very specific technicality.
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1801250/new-zealands-a...
But that worked because chocolate is very recognizable as an ingredient. Palm oil isn't, and it's in everything. Perhaps a similar certification process might help, but when you buy something that doesn't carry the logo you'll still have to check the ingredients list because often you have no idea if palm oil was used or not.
I'd find it honestly difficult to buy lower-quality chocolate than Cadbury's. No wonder you can't find it in most of Western Europe - only Brits tolerate it, mostly because they had little else "back then" (pre-EU accession).
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.
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.
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.
if you want chocolate, there are many superb fair-trade brands which use only (> 70%) chocolate and sugar
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?
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.
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.
I think so, and not just for the orangutans.