Fonterra implicated in rainforest destruction

Draining peatland releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the world's atmosphere and is the main reason Indonesia is the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China and the US. Photo: Oka Budhi/GreenpeaceA Greenpeace investigation has revealed that the iconic New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is implicated in Indonesian and Malaysian rainforest destruction, dead orangutans and driving global greenhouse gas emissions.

By encouraging the use of palm-based animal feed from cleared rainforests, and by pushing an intensive industrial farming model in New Zealand, Fonterra is actively contributing to one of the world's largest causes of greenhouse gas emissions, says the Greenpeace report.

The dairy giant is pushing its farmers to use hundreds of thousands of tonnes of palm-based animal feed from South-East Asia's palm oil plantations planted on land that was, until recently, covered by rainforest.

Fonterra's half-ownership of a company called RD1, a major importer of Palm Kernel Expeller (PKE) for animal feed, and an industry model which is driving New Zealand farmers to an ever more intensive use of animal feeds such as PKE. Fonterra is helping to fuel the logging of Indonesian and Malaysian rainforests and driving up New Zealand's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal feed

Much is known about the destructive palm oil industry but little focus has been directed on another product of palm, palm kernel animal feed (technically known as palm kernel expeller or PKE), made from the kernel of the fruit that comes from the palm plant.

Last year New Zealand imported a whopping one quarter of the world's PKE production, a figure confirmed by the US Department of Agriculture. Sourcing this destructively produced animal feed in large quantities has proved fatal for such a small country.



Figures also show that in the last decade imports have grown 2700 per cent from 400 tonnes to over 1.1 million tonnes to feed New Zealand's growing dairy herd.

While Fonterra farmers (95 per cent of farms in New Zealand are part of the Fonterra cooperative) are using this feed to boost production, the cooperative is also involved in the PKE supply chain through its half-owned RD1 subsidiary.

RD1 has close links with Wilmar International, one of the world's biggest rainforest destroyers. The palm-based animal feed that RD1 imports comes exclusively from Wilmar, alleged for its part in illegal forest destruction, illegal fires on carbon rich peatlands, destruction of endangered animal habitat and creating social conflict by illegally taking community lands.

It owns over 500,000 hectares of land - mainly in Indonesia and the majority of this is yet to be cleared for palm plantations.