Criticisms of Cargill
This article addresses various criticisms of Cargill, a large, privately held, multinational corporation, based in the United States.
Palm oil is a globally traded commodity used in a wide range of consumer products, including packaged foods, cosmetics, and cleaning supplies, and as a feedstock for biofuels. Produced in the world's tropics on industrial monoculture plantations, oil palm has severe and widespread negative impacts on the environment and local people.
Oil palm plantations are driving the destruction of tropical rainforests around the globe. Indonesia — which has the world's highest rate of deforestation, with, on average, 20 square miles (52 km2) of rainforest destroyed everyday — is ground zero for oil palm expansion, and produces more than 45 percent of the world's palm oil.
Cargill, through their oil palm arm CTP Holdings, owns 5 oil palm plantations in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), and is the largest exporter of palm oil to the USA. Cargill is also the largest US importer of palm oil, sourcing the oil from at least 26 producers and buying roughly 11% of Indonesia's total oil palm output.
Cargill's oil palm operations violate environmental law and human rights, including:
In destroying forests and harming forest peoples, Cargill regularly violates its own corporate social responsibility policies and industry commitments to produce palm oil sustainably.
In 2003, Cargill completed a port for processing soya in Santarém in the Amazon region of Brazil. The port dramatically increased soya production in the area due to the proximity of easy transport and processing facilities. Although Cargill complied with state legislation, they failed to comply with a federal law requiring an Environmental Impact Statement. In late 2003 Greenpeace launched a campaign claiming the new port sped up deforestation of local rain forest as farmers have cleared land to make way for crops.
...
Wikipedia