Palm Oil Day of Action
| When? | Saturday 29th October 2005 |
| Where? | Outside Tesco on Market Street, Manchester |
| Why? | To raise awareness of the damage that palm oil production is doing to the rainforests that are home to endangered species such as the orang-utan. |
We've
just received this special report from our guest correspondent, Onkey
the orang-utan:
Many human foodstuffs contain palm oil harvested from plantations in East Asia. Our local orang-utan clans are being threatened because our lovely forest is being cut down and replaced by oil palm, and it is high time for people to find out what is happening to our home.
When I left the Borneo forest, the thought of facing human beings in their own concrete settings was rather petrifying. However, as the representative of the orang-utan clan, it is my duty to contribute to the campaign of human beings who raise awareness of how their own extraordinary eating habits threaten the orang-utan habitat.
Straight from my seat in Animal Class and still suffering from jetlag, I was welcomed by the Manchester group of Friends of the Earth, and escorted to the nearest Tesco store in town. Here it was that we caught the audience in the act (wow, who eats blue foodstuffs?). A fellow ape from Malaysia had come over as well, so it was nice to groom each other, but he was very orange, and not really my type.
There
were lots of humans of all kinds: small, big and everything in between.
Of course, I did not exactly speak their language, and I still don't
understand why some of the small ones responded with loud screams and
tears down their cheeks. Others were very nice and wanted to hug me,
and I could see lots of flashes from shiny little boxes. A nice little
being treated me to some tasty little yellow coloured sticks too!
Meanwhile, the great people of the FoE group, spoke to lots of very
big fellow people, who all kindly signed cards to your leaders, so that
in future, laws may better protect us in Borneo, and our mates in Sumatra
and Malaysia. One of these leaders came to see us too, and he said how
important the campaign is, and how he is committed to working with Friends
of the Earth to bring about action at a global as well as a national
level.
It was a very successful day, and I hope that all the people who only just learnt of our trouble will help to spread the message. I am very glad to have had the overseas experience, but have returned to Borneo straight away, as there is definitely no place like home...
More information
Find out more
about the impact of palm oil production in Friends of the Earth's briefing
"The
oil for ape scandal".
Press
release: Stop the "oil for ape" scandal
Press
release: Tesco named and shamed in "oil for ape" scandal
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