Did you know that orangutans share 97% of our DNA? Pretty amazing, huh? Also, Orangutan means "Man Of The Jungle" in Indonesian and the have the intelligence of a 5 or 6 year old human!
Unfortunately though, these amazing creatures, along with many other species, are in grave danger of extinction, habitat loss and some are even made to be pets, all because of the palm oil trade. Now, if you haven't heard of palm oil I think you must have been living under a rock for the past few years. There have been numerous ad campaigns and petitions to try to stop this from happening but the sad truth is that 6 to 12 orangutans are killed every day while their habitat is being cleared for palm oil plantations. On top of this, mothers with baby orangutans will be separated from their child to become a prostitute while their baby is taken to be sold as a pet!
All because of palm oil....
Annually, over 50 million tons of palm oil is produced. It's not sustainable and replaces 12 million hectares of rainforest a year. That's the size of North Korea!
50% of all prepackaged products on supermarket shelves contain palm oil and the average person consumes 10kg of palm oil a year. Palm oil is pretty bad for you though as it has a high saturated fat content which promotes heart disease, increases cholesterol levels, raises blood pressure and contributes to obesity. These all combine together to make one deadly disease: cardiovascular disease. This disease takes the life of one person every two seconds.
However, here in Australia we don't have a mandatory labeling law which means palm oil can hide under the label of "Vegetable Oil" and over 25 other false names. There are other alternatives to palm oil too: canola oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil but no are as cheap or efficient meaning large companies are hesitant to make the switch. We can't tell which products have palm oil in them and which don't.
Check out my friends website http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/and find out more about everything you want to know about palm oil and how to avoid buying it.
Orangutans are our closest primates-why should they suffer?
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