You're really spoiling us: has Ferrero been wrongly accused over Nutella?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/19/ferrero-accused-nutella-youre-really-spoiling-us

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It is not often that government ministers urge their citizens to boycott a specific product. But that is just what the French environment minister Ségolène Royal did with Nutella this week – claiming that the palm oil it is made from contributes to deforestation and does “considerable damage” to the environment.

Cue irritation from the Italian company Ferrero that makes the chocolatey spread and a backlash from Royal’s opposite number in Italy. Industry observers including Greenpeace and WWF also leapt to the defence of the company, pointing out that it has in fact led the industry in cleaning up its act and goes much further than most competitors on responsible sourcing of palm oil.

Related: Stop eating Nutella and save the forests, urges French ecology minister

The company has met its commitments to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the voluntary mechanism for controlling the practices of the industry, a year ahead of time. This means it can trace 100% of its palm oil from RSPO registered oil mills.

Royal was flagging up a real issue but chose the wrong company to put in the stocks.

“Ségolène Royal opened her mouth but didn’t engage her brain,” said Scott Poynton, founder of the Forest Trust, an NGO that works closely with Ferrero and other companies on their palm oil supply chain. “It’s a shame that she chose Nutella. Ferrero are the leaders. If all the companies in the palm oil industry operated like Fererro, the palm oil industry would not have the reputation that it does.”

Following the counter-blast Royal tweeted to offer “one thousand apologies” and said she would “flag up the progress” the company had made.

But the row has served to highlight the link between palm oil and deforestation and the less-than-perfect efforts by the industry to clean up its act. The RSPO is the key measure of progress for much of the industry. According to Duncan Brack, a researcher at the Chatham House thinktank, around 60% of the global trade is conducted by companies who either operate within its standards or have indicated plans to fall into line by 2020.

But many believe the standard set by the RSPO is too weak and, against this yardstick, progress amounts to going nowhere fast. At the beginning of June a host of US corporations, including Walmart and Starbucks, called on the RSPO to toughen up its standards.

The roundtable’s coverage of the industry is impressive, said Brack. But “in terms of the robustness of the system itself, clearly it could be better”.

“I’m not a great fan of the RSPO,” said Poynton. “Ten years ago people sat around a table and came up with the lowest common denominator standard. That’s rubbish.”

Marcus Colchester, a senior policy adviser for the Forest Peoples Programme, said the issue was with ensuring that voluntary commitments to the RSPO were followed. “We are trying to make this mechanism work but we’re not happy that it is working yet. There’s a lot of work to be done to ensure compliance.”

One problem with the RSPO is that its mills are not the source of deforestation. This happens in the plantations that supply the mills. The RSPO does not require mills to trace every palm fruit back to its source.

“Ferrero’s responsibility does not stop at certification,” said a spokesperson for the company, which has gone beyond the RSPO and developed its own palm oil charter. According to Poynton, Ferrero now traces 98% of its palm oil right back to the plantation. It is the first company to go this far.

But Ferrero does not buy its palm oil direct from these plantations. And while its own supply chain might be in order, their business can still indirectly support bad practice.

Corporate middlemen govern much of this vast trade. Colchester said the RSPO had not succeeded in stopping human rights abuses across the supply chain.

“The RSPO standard is meant to stop land grabbing, unfortunately RSPO members are still taking land without the consent of communities,” he said.

Like most buyers, Ferrero keeps its suppliers secret. “They are not able to say that the companies they are taking product from are yet fully compliant,” said Colchester. These suppliers still had “a long way to go” before they could be considered sustainable and ethical, he said.