Mars

So, one of the other manufacturers that's responded is Mars. Looking at what it produces it covers a lot more than I thought. Here is what their customer service team had to say on the issue of palm oil:

Mars deals only with those suppliers who have respect for the environment and is committed to working with all stakeholders to make progress towards more sustainable production.

"We support the environment and the sustainable production of palm oil. Currently we ONLY use palm oil suppliers that are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). We are going further and our aim is to move to 100% RSPO certified palm oil, originanting from sustainable sources by 2015.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a non-profit association works to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil within the supply chain and open dialogue between its stakeholders. More information on the RSPO can be found at www.rspo.org."

It was a nice, quick reply - but didn't answer my questions. I would have thought a company that was responsible for making something we eat, would know what ingredients were going in to the product. It amazes me how so far no one has specified which products have palm oil in and which do not. None of them admit why they don't label it - is it because they actually don't care what type of 'vegetable oil' goes into the food as long as it's the cheapest the supplier can get hold of. That doesn't sound very responsible to me. The other, quite worrying, point in Mars' response is that they 'ONLY use palm oil suppliers that are members of the RSPO" - yet still have the aim of using 100% certified palm oil by 2015, which means that members of the RSPO are producing non-sustainable palm oil. The RSPO sounds like a very good idea in theory, but the more I hear, the more I wonder what effect it is actually having in the real world, or whether it is just being used by big companies as a PR tool to 'show' people they're doing something.

Finally, what concerns me most is that Mars and many others aim (which doesn't even amount to a promise) to be using 100% certified sustainable palm oil by 2015. That's another 6 years away. Experts are predicting the orangutan will be exinct in the wild in 10 years. 2015 might be too late.