Vegetable Oil | STOP ANIMAL ABUSE

“I know I have just recently done a post on palm oil, but the following web site gives so much more information…stuff I had no idea about! So please, protect the environment & save the orangutan…read the following then visit the links at the end. Please also sign the petitions below!!

A Bit more info on Palm Oil…I think you might find useful; find out more at the link below:-

Rescue by COP

Palm oil is mainly used in foods, cosmetics and cleaning agents, but it can also be found in some bio-fuels. This fatty vegetable oil is mixed with a number of other fuels and liquids to create an ‘Eco-Friendly‘ bio-fuel.

This ‘Eco-Friendly’ bio-fuel has already become mandatory in numerous countries including Malaysia (where 5% of all fuel must contain palm oil), and if it continues to be voted into petrol stations around the world, the future for our orange primate cousins and their rainforest homes will be very bleak.

In supermarkets in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, United Kingdom and many European countries, 50% of all baked goods, confectionery, spreads, body products, cosmetics, cleaning agents, air fresheners and sometimes even paint and printer ink contain palm oil, and the average first-world citizen consumes at least 10kg of palm oil each year.

These statistics dramatically increase with countries that span across Asia. Fact is, a large percentage of products in your household will contain palm oil, and almost anything that contains a high level of saturated fat will have palm oil in it (except for some dairy products, which gain their saturated fat from full cream milk).

However, you often don’t know if products you are buying contribute to this detrimental destruction?You see, there are no laws on the mandatory labelling of palm oil in most countries, so palm oil is often hidden under the name of ‘vegetable oil’ or over 170 other names.

This means that consumers are blinded as to which products they buy are contributing the destruction of our natural world and it’s inhabitance.

Due to its high saturated fat content, palm oil promotes heart disease, increases cholesterol levels, raises blood pressure and therefore is a contributing factor to obesity. These four health issues are the main causes of one of the world’s biggest killers; cardiovascular disease (also known as heart disease). This extremely common disease claims one life every two seconds. Palm oil is also high in Omega 6 fatty acid, which is associated with arthritis, inflammation, and even breast and prostate cancer.

Some people argue that we need palm oil in this day and age in order to produce certain foods and products. But what about 30 years ago?

Back then, palm oil was virtually non-existent in most supermarkets in the first-world, so why is there such a high demand for it now? Unhealthy, processed foods, chemicals to add to cleaning products, and fuel. We don’t need palm oil.

Alternatives to palm oil include: canola oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil, but unfortunately none as cheap or efficient, which is why companies are reluctant to switch.

Did you know that each and everyone of us is fuelling one of the world’s biggest ecological disasters and acts of primate genocide in history?

Despite this amazing biodiversity and delicate web of species, AN AREA THE SIZE OF 300 FOOTBALL FIELDS OF RAINFOREST IS CLEARED EACH HOUR in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for the production of one vegetable oil.

That’s 6 football fields destroyed each minute. This vegetable oil is called palm oil, and is found in hundreds of the everyday products, from baked goods and confectionery, to cosmetics and cleaning agents… many of which you buy in your weekly shopping.

Due to the massive international demand for palm oil, palm oil plantations are rapidly replacing the rainforest habitat of the critically endangered orangutan; with

Orangutan killed to make way for Oil plantation

over 90% of their habitat already destroyed in the last 20 years.

Orangutans are some of our closest relatives, sharing approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. Orangutan means ‘Person of the jungle’ in the Indonesian language. It is estimated that 6 to 12 of these ‘jungle people’ are killed each day for palm oil.

These gentle creatures are either killed in the deforestation process, when they wonder into a palm oil plantation looking for food, or in the illegal pet trade after they’ve been captured and kept as pets in extremely poor conditions and provided with extremely poor nutrition.

Orangutans are considered as pests by the palm oil industry. In the deforestation process, workers are told that if wildlife gets in the way, they are to do whatever is necessary in order to dispose them, no matter how inhumane. Often orangutans are run over by logging machinery, beat to death, buried alive or set on fire… all in the name of palm oil.

Government data has shown that over 50,000 orangutans have already died as a result of deforestation due to palm oil in the last two decades. Experts say that if this pattern of destruction and exploitation continues, these intelligent acrobats of the jungle will be extinct in the wild within 3 to 12 years (as early as 2015). It is also thought that their jungle habitat will be completely gone within 20 years (approximately 2033).

Around 50 million tons of palm oil is produced annually; with almost all of that being non-sustainable palm oil, that replaces 12 million hectares of dense, bio-diverse rainforest. That’s the equivalent landmass of North Korea deforested each year for palm oil alone!

Think of the consequences next time you do your weekly shopping; the consequences not only for orangutans and other animals, but for us as the human race; for we cannot survive without the rainforests either.

We have a choice, orangutans do not.

Please Read more: http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/

Pictures of Orangutans on site -Click link below: – Locked away, chained up, boxed in – Rescues by COP

“When we saw the big male approaching our camp we were afraid. So we quickly ran over to him, doused him in petrol and set him on fire.” – Fermin, a bulldozer driver at a logging sight in Borneo.”

Images – Viewer discretion advised:-http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/images.php

Rescues by COP – Centre for OrangutanProtection:http://www.orangutanprotection.com/indexina.php?lang=eng&menu=show_weblog_index1.php

Willie Smits

Dedicated rescue teams, such as COP, devote their time to rescuing orangutans from logging sights, palm oil plantations, zoos/ animal parks and pet owners.

These strong teams face the reality of the palm oil crisis each day, being their first-hand to save the orangutans from their horrible fate.

Groups like COP rescue many orangutan from the local people who have been keeping the apes as pets in small cages, boxes or tied-up on chains.

Willie Smits, Sean Whyte and Richard Zimmerman are the pioneers in orangutan protection and conservation.

If you would like to help raise awareness about the palm oil crisis and raise funds for orangutan centres, take a look at the ideas and suggestions below.We must work together to give the orangutan a voice!:- http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/how-to-help.php

More pictures: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150953263103819.438182.764913818&type=1

Suffering Species

The animals are not only losing their habitat, but the roads constructed for the plantation workers expose the forest to poachers and animal smugglers.

Roads in a drastically deforested area close to Sentarum Lake National Park. The land has been cleared by PT KPC, a subsidiary of Sinar Mas Group, Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer Coordinates: N 000 05 22.83 – E 110 33 30.06. By Daniel Whittingstall

These roads allow the poachers and smugglers to access the forest and capture the exotic wildlife within. These animals are often sold on the illegal pet trade market, used in the entertainment business, slaughtered in order to make medicines, killed for their fur, skin or ivory, or, in the case of Sunbears; put in small cages and milked for their bile (fluid in liver).

Orangutans, along with many other endangered South-East Asian animal species, can now only be found living in fragmented pockets of remaining rainforest. This is not only due to habitat destruction, but also these sickening acts of cruelty and murder.