By creating Unmask Palm Oil, Australians want the companies to tell them which oil their daily-use products are manufactured with.

Unmask Palm Oil is the Australasian organisation for mandatory labelling of palm oil. The organisation works across Australia and New Zealand to bring about more transparent labelling of vegetable oils. Like other environmental and social NGO’s we are concerned with the environmental and social fallout caused by the rampant growth of the conventional palm oil industry. It is our view that consumers of palm oil, even those outside the borders of palm oil producing countries, are still implicit in this destruction. Consumers are as much a part of the problem as they are a part of the solution.

Unmask Palm Oil believes that labelling is a vital tool for consumers to be able to take action and demand Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) in their products. Under shared New Zealand and Australian legislation, weak labelling requirements allow companies to label palm oil and other oils generically as vegetable oil. This makes it incredibly complicated to tell if the product contains palm oil and even harder to tell if that palm oil is from a sustainable source. Australasian labelling legislation is different to that of the U.S which requires companies to label which specific oils they are using. The EU is following America’s example from December this year. We aim to bring New Zealand and Australian labelling laws into line with the U.S and EU standards.

Read more on betterpalmoildebate.org