Palm oil labelling – promotes transparency or attracts negative attention

THE battle-hardened Malaysian palm oil industry is in the middle of yet another bruising fight. The theatre of war this time is Australia and the focus is on a proposed legislation that singles out palm oil as a food ingredient.

The main challenge here is to reverse the momentum because the Senate, one of the two houses of the Australian Federal Parliament, passed the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling Palm Oil) Bill in June. If the House of Representatives votes the same way, the new law will require producers, manufacturers and distributors of food containing palm oil to list it on the contents label of their products, instead of the current practice of using the umbrella term “vegetable oil”.