🧀 Wyobraź sobie, że bierzesz garść najzwyklejszego, klasycznego mac and cheese. Kremowy, serowy, ciepły… no, taki jak z amerykańskich filmów. Ale nagle ktoś wpada do kuchni, wysypuje Ci na głowę pół paczki Cheetosów i mówi: „Masz, jedz!”.
Jeśli lubisz serowe chrupki Cheetos – musisz spróbować makaronu Cheetos mac'n cheese. To jest kwintesencja tego smaku w wersji „na ciepło, na dużą miskę”.
Snack giant PepsiCo allegedly sourced “sustainable” palm oil from razed Indigenous land in Peru
PepsiCo‘s supply chain is allegedly linked to environmental and human rights violations in Peru, involving Amazon deforestation and Indigenous land invasion. For three years, palm oil from deforested Shipibo-Konibo territory has been used in products like Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Cheetos, Doritos and more. PepsiCo sources oil from Ocho Sur, a company notorious for environmental crimes and forest loss. The palm oil industry in Peru, which doubled production in
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Snack giant PepsiCo allegedly sourced “sustainable” palm oil from razed Indigenous land in Peru
PepsiCo‘s supply chain is allegedly linked to environmental and human rights violations in Peru, involving Amazon deforestation and Indigenous land invasion. For three years, palm oil from deforested Shipibo-Konibo territory has been used in products like Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Cheetos, Doritos and more. PepsiCo sources oil from Ocho Sur, a company notorious for environmental crimes and forest loss. The palm oil industry in Peru, which doubled production in a decade, is allegedly responsible for significant illegal deforestation, violent indigenous landgrabbing, animal extinction and human rights abuses. Take action every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil for wildlife and Indigenous people.
The article below was originally published on April 18 2024 by Ojo Público and MongaBay. Written By Elisângela Mendonça , Aramís Castro , Andrew Wasley. Photography: David Díaz, Illustration by Claudia Calderón. This investigation was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. Read more
Sign petition: Tell PepsiCo stop destroying rainforests for palm oil!
PepsiCo’s profit-first palm oil policy is still destroying rainforests.
Meanwhile, PepsiCo keeps on promising that it’s working towards a truly sustainable palm oil policy, making commitments to human rights and zero deforestation. But this new report leaves no doubt: this whole time, PepsiCo’s palm oil promises have been nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Peruvian palm oil linked to environmental and human rights violations ended up in the supply chain for the makers of Gatorade and Cheetos
The US food and drink giant PepsiCo has been linked through its supply chain to Amazon deforestation and the invasion of Indigenous lands in Peru, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), Mongabay and Peruvian outlet Ojo Público can reveal.
For at least three years, PepsiCo’s Peruvian suppliers have been sourcing palm oil from deforested territory claimed by the Shipibo-Konibo people in Ucayali, eastern Peru.
The company, which manufactures snacks including Cheetos and Gatorade, runs a factory in Mexico that buys Peruvian palm oil after it has been processed at a Mexican refinery. That refinery buys from a Peruvian consortium, Sol de Palma, that shares storage facilities with Ocho Sur, a notorious US-funded business accused of repeated environmental and human rights violations.
The storage facilities mix the various batches of palm oil, meaning PepsiCo products likely contain Ocho Sur oil despite no longer buying directly from the company.
Ocho Sur is linked to 155 sq km of forest loss in the past decade – both within its own property and through its direct suppliers. While some of the forest loss took place under other companies, satellite analyses by the Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) and TBIJ show clear deforestation on Ocho Sur’s land in the past three years.
Palm oil production in Peru has more than doubled in the past decade and Ucayali, a hotspot for cultivation on the border with Brazil, now has the country’s second-highest rate of forest loss. It’s estimated that about 30% of the country’s palm plantations are on illegally deforested land. Half of the oil is sent to international markets.
Today, Ocho Sur is the second-largest palm oil company in Peru. It was created in 2016 after acquiring the assets of two other controversial companies active in the region since 2012.
“Before 2012, the deforestation rates were pretty low,” said Tom Younger, an anthropologist working with the Forest Peoples’s Programme, an NGO. The arrival of palm oil plantations, he said, “set into motion some dynamics of land invasion and deforestation”.
Some of the forest loss on company-run oil palm plantations occurred on land claimed by the Santa Clara de Uchunya community of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people. They have endured a long and often hostile battle for recognition, and only a tiny portion of the 200 sq km of land the community claims has been formally titled.
In 2020, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a regional legal body, ordered the Peruvian state to protect the Santa Clara de Uchunya community against threats and land invasions.
Luisa Mori Gonzáles, president of the community’s defence front, says the arrival of the palm oil industry has affected their food supply and sown division.
“We use that territory to feed ourselves or to hunt,” she told TBIJ and Ojo-Público. “The company put it in their [other community members’] heads that they are going to have money and wealth – but that is a lie.” Deforestation near the Santa Clara de Uchunya communityDavid Díaz/OjoPúblico Neither Ocho Sur nor the liquidated companies whose assets it acquired had obtained the necessary environmental permit for their plantations. The Peruvian Agriculture Ministry sanctioned and fined the dissolved company Plantaciones de Ucayali in 2015 for failing to comply with an order to stop its activities. Ocho Sur eventually paid these fines in 2022, but by 2018 the companies had failed to conserve the legally required 30% of forest, the non-profit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has found. It is unclear whether the majority of the deforestation took place under Plantaciones de Ucayali or Ocho Sur.
Impunity for environmental crimes such as illegal deforestation is a major problem, according to Julia Urrunaga of the EIA, which recently published a report linking Peruvian palm oil to other well-known food and cosmetics companies.
“The authorities have the responsibility of guaranteeing that what is sold has a legal origin,” said Urrunaga.“If a product is being marketed that is being grown and produced in illegally deforested areas without a production permit, that should be an illegal product.”
Experts attribute the growth of palm oil in Latin America, today the second largest producing region for the industry outside south-east Asia – and the fastest growing – in part to its weaker regulation.
Earlier this year, Peru’s Congress approved a new amendment to its forest and wildlife law, loosening requirements for deforestation in “agriculture exclusion areas” and forgiving historic offences.
Robert Heilmayr, an environmental economist teaching at the University of California Santa Barbara, told TBIJ that while private-sector commitments have brought some positive advances in transparency in countries like Indonesia, the industry’s complexity makes full traceability a challenge.
He said: “It gets a little bit hard to know exactly where the fresh fruit bunches are coming from and there’s no third-party auditing of those supply lists.”
According to CCCA’s analysis, PepsiCo manufactures at least 15 products that contain Peruvian palm oil refined in Mexico – among them Doritos, Cheetos and Gatorade. It has pledged to make 100% of its palm oil supply deforestation-free by the end of 2022 and for its operation to be net zero by 2040.
Concerns about the legal origins of palm oil have also given rise to international initiatives like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry’s most widely used sustainability certification scheme. The Santa Clara de Uchunya community of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people have only been officially granted a fraction of their claimed territory. Photo: David Díaz/OjoPúblico Peru has ten RSPO members. Ocho Sur is not a member and only one of the companies in Sol de Palma’s consortium is.
PepsiCo said: “We take all inquiries like this seriously and have initiated an investigation through our established grievance process to assess whether any action on our part is required.” The company stressed that Ocho Sur is not a direct supplier and said it has engaged its direct suppliers to better understand their ties to Ocho Sur and ensure they take corrective actions if needed.
Ocho Sur said that it could not be held responsible for the actions of the companies whose assets it had taken over. It referred TBIJ to a document submitted to the UN in December 2023 that repeatedly states that it has no financial or legal links to one of those businesses. In the document it also strenuously denied sowing division in local communities and said that since its founding, the company had made special efforts “to forge a friendly, fruitful and mutually respectful relationship” with Indigenous and other groups. It said that it fully complies with all obligations with respect to Indigenous peoples’ rights and the environment and does not allow deforestation in its supply chain.
On the subject of environmental permits, Ocho Sur added: “The certification has been requested for a long time and [Midagri, the agriculture ministry] has failed to make a statement on the matter, granting it, as it should, or providing reasonable arguments to justify its refusal.”
Oleomex, owner of the Mexican refinery that supplies PepsiCo’s factory, said: “The oil we supply to our customer meets all sustainability standards as it is RSPO-certified oil.” However, it added that supply contracts with Ocho Sur were negotiated through a third party and that it has agreed to suspend them until the complaints raised in the investigation are resolved.
Sol de Palma did not comment.
Peruvian judges are yet to rule on whether Ocho Sur can be held responsible for past incursions into the Santa Clara de Uchunya community.
While the community awaits that ruling, Mori Gonzáles has vowed to continue protecting the territory: “We’re going to fight for as long as we can.”
The article below was originally published on April 18 2024 by OjoPúblico and MongaBay. Written By Elisângela Mendonça , Aramís Castro , Andrew Wasley. Photography: David Díaz, Illustration by Claudia Calderón. This investigation was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.
ENDS
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Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Despite decades of promises to end deforestation for palm oil PepsiCo (owner of crisp brands Frito-Lay, Cheetos and Doritos along with hundreds of other snack food brands) have continued sourcing palm oil that strongly linked to ecocide, indigenous landgrabbing, and the habitat destruction of the rarest animals on earth.
All of these animals are on a knife-edge of survival. It is for this reason, we boycott PepsiCo and its sub-brands. Find out about their forest destroying activities below and what you can do to stop them by using your wallet as a weapon. it’s the #Boycott4Wildlife
Report by Pusaka, Walhi, and Forest Peoples Programme finds that household names including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Wilmar and Unilever and associated global financial institutions and investors continue to ‘turn a blind eye’ to human rights abuses in their palm oil supply chains.
Despite these very serious, long term and well documented human rights abuses and environmental damage, on the ground, major downstream companies continue to invest in, or source products from these plantations.
A 2021 joint BBC/Gecko Project and Mongabay Investigation found that Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo have sourced palm oil from Indonesian companies linked to human rights abuses and have failed to pass on millions in profits to smallholder ‘plasma’ farmers.
Sign petition: Tell PepsiCo stop destroying rainforests for palm oil!
PepsiCo’s profit-first palm oil policy is still destroying rainforests.
Meanwhile, PepsiCo keeps on promising that it’s working towards a truly sustainable palm oil policy, making commitments to human rights and zero deforestation. But this new report leaves no doubt: this whole time, PepsiCo’s palm oil promises have been nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.
Last week, Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project released a joint investigation into a scheme that was intended to help lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty and cut them in on the spoils of the global palm oil boom, but has instead been pla…
Despite decades of promises to end deforestation for palm oil PepsiCo (owner of crisp brands Frito-Lay, Cheetos and Doritos along with hundreds of other snack food brands) have continued sourcing palm oil that strongly linked to ecocide, indigenous landgrabbing, and the habitat destruction of the rarest animals on earth.
All of these animals are on a knife-edge of survival. It is for this reason, we boycott PepsiCo and its sub-brands. Find out about their forest destroying activities below and what you can do to stop them by using your wallet as a weapon. it’s the #Boycott4Wildlife
Despite decades of promises to end deforestation for palm oil PepsiCo (owner of crisp brands Frito-Lay, Cheetos and Doritos along with hundreds of other snack food brands) have continued sourcing palm oil that strongly linked to ecocide, indigenous landgrabbing, and the habitat destruction of the rarest animals on earth.
All of these animals are on a knife-edge of survival. It is for this reason, we boycott PepsiCo and its sub-brands. Find out about their forest destroying activities below and what you can do to stop them by using your wallet as a weapon. it’s the #Boycott4Wildlife
Report by Pusaka, Walhi, and Forest Peoples Programme finds that household names including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Wilmar and Unilever and associated global financial institutions and investors continue to ‘turn a blind eye’ to human rights abuses in their palm oil supply chains.
Despite these very serious, long term and well documented human rights abuses and environmental damage, on the ground, major downstream companies continue to invest in, or source products from these plantations.
A 2021 joint BBC/Gecko Project and Mongabay Investigation found that Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo have sourced palm oil from Indonesian companies linked to human rights abuses and have failed to pass on millions in profits to smallholder ‘plasma’ farmers.
Sign petition: Tell PepsiCo stop destroying rainforests for palm oil!
PepsiCo’s profit-first palm oil policy is still destroying rainforests.
Meanwhile, PepsiCo keeps on promising that it’s working towards a truly sustainable palm oil policy, making commitments to human rights and zero deforestation. But this new report leaves no doubt: this whole time, PepsiCo’s palm oil promises have been nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.
Last week, Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project released a joint investigation into a scheme that was intended to help lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty and cut them in on the spoils of the global palm oil boom, but has instead been pla…
In late 2023, Kelloggs became Kellanova for their US arm. Savvy consumers have been pressuring Kelloggs for decades to cease using deforestation palm oil. Yet they actually haven’t stopped this. From their website:
‘All of the palm oil that is used in our products is sourced from a combination of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Certified Segregated supply chain, RSPO Mass Balance mixed-source supply and the purchase of Green Palm certificates.’
This phrasing above means absolutely nothing. In reality, Kelloggs’ supply chain continues to slash and burn thousands of hectares of forests and release mega-tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. Kellogg’s is therefore involved in the killing thousands of endangered species. Once these animals are gone – they are gone for good. See research on Kelloggs’s palm oil sources including a PDF of their palm oil mills.
Global Witness October 2021 Report: Violence and death for palm oil connected to household supermarket brands (RSPO members)
“One palm oil firm, Rimbunan Hijau, [Papua New Guinea] negligently ignored repeated and avoidable worker deaths and injuries on palm oil plantations, with at least 11 workers and the child of one worker losing their lives over an eight-year period.
“Tainted palm oil from Papua New Guinea plantations was sold to household name brands, all of them RSPO members including Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Colgate, Danone, Hershey’s and PZ Cussons and Reckitt Benckiser”
Kelloggsmakes claims of sustainability for palm oil on their website. However these claims do not match what is happening on the ground. This is pure greenwashing. The brand has a high ranking on the WWF Scorecard and has an RSPO certification. However this high ranking is greenwashing and this mega-brand is purchasing huge amounts of palm oil from four mills that are responsible for 44% of all deforestation: Jhonlin, Mulia Sawit, Tunas Baru Lampung and Peputra Group
Palm Oil Detectives thinks it is wise to boycott all Kelloggs sub-brands until it has been independently verified that they have stopped 100% of their deforestation activities throughout the world.
Sign a petition telling Kelloggs to stop deforestation!
Download the Bahasa translated version here. Analysis by Chain Reaction Research (CRR) shows that ten palm oil companies were alone responsible for approximately 39,500 hectares (ha) of deforestation and peat development in Indonesia, Sarawak (Malays…
El grupo #OchoSur vendió aceite de palma libre de deforestación a los fabricantes de #Cheetos, #Colgate y #Pepsi, pero la realidad era muy diferente.
Dos de las plantaciones de aceite de palma más grandes de Perú se encuentran en el lado oeste del río #Ucayali, que fluye desde los #Andes hasta el #Amazonas. Desde arriba, el paisaje circundante parece pintura: un remolino de verde entre lagos oscuros y ríos marrones. #Tibecocha, la más grande de las dos plantaciones, parece haber sido trazada en la jungla con escuadra y cartabón. Su cuadrícula rectangular de caminos se extiende por casi 13 kilómetros y contiene un millón de palmeras. La propiedad más pequeña, Zanja Seca, es casi del tamaño de Manhattan.
Pero la creación de las plantaciones tuvo un alto precio. Para dar paso a esos campos industriales de palmeras, se talaron alrededor de 12.000 hectáreas de #selvatropical, un tramo de destrucción que un líder indígena calificó como un acto de #ecogenocidio. Los biólogos del Museo Field de Chicago han clasificado las montañas escarpadas que se elevan al oeste de las plantaciones "entre las más diversas de todas las áreas de conservación en Perú". Cuando el equipo del museo examinó la región durante tres semanas en el año 2000, contabilizó 1.600 especies de plantas, 71 especies de mamíferos y más de 500 especies de aves. Al menos 28 especies eran nuevas para la #ciencia.
Desde la década de 1960, se ha acabado con más del 13% de la selva amazónica original. La mayor parte de la destrucción se ha concentrado en #Brasil, pero Perú es segundo en la lista. Si la destrucción continúa, Thomas Lovejoy, un exasesor de biodiversidad del Banco Mundial, ha argumentado que el Amazonas podría alcanzar un punto de inflexión y volverse demasiado caliente, seco y propenso a incendios para seguir siendo una selva tropical. Sin su capacidad de absorción de #carbono, el mundo se enfrentaría a un aumento de las temperaturas y al derretimiento de los #casquetespolares, haciendo que ciudades tan lejanas como #Mumbái sean prácticamente inhabitables.
