Palm oil plantations "built on the bones of orangutans"

At the SACC annual meeting, our keynote speaker Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas urged us to spread the word about the sheer destruction of orangutan habitat by palm oil plantations in Indonesia. In addition, orangutans are routinely shot and
killed to keep them off plantation land. This is a dire situation for the continuing existence of orangutans in the wild.

We promised to send out a list of palm oil-derived ingredients to help our members avoid it in our purchases.

Here is a list from Bornean Orangutan Survival (BOS) Australia:

-- As a rule of thumb, if the saturated fat content is about 50%, there is a good chance that the vegetable oil will in fact be palm oil.

-- If the product contains margarine, it is highly likely that the margarine will have been derived from palm oil.

-- Additives and agents such as emulsifiers (E471 is a common one), while a
small component of the overall product, can also be derived from palm oil.

-- Other names to keep an eye out for that could be or be derived from palm oil
are cocoa butter equivalent (CBE), cocoa butter substitute (CBS), palm olein and
palm stearine.

-- In non-food products like soaps and detergents, the list includes elaeis
guineensis, sodium lauryl sulphate, cetyl alcohol, stearic acid, isopropyl and
other palmitates, steareth-2, steareth-20 and fatty alcohol sulphates – all of
which may be derived from palm oil.