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I’m a little giddy this morning because I may have helped a little bit in our quest to get the Girl Scouts to rid their cookies of palm oil.

Finally, after a few tries, I got a response from Mr. Chris Bergerson, Project Manager, Girl Entrepreneurship, Program Development, Girl Scouts of the USA. It’s a long response and he quoted information obtained from the Sierra Club about oil palm plantations, illegal logging, poaching and other threats facing the orangutans. Here’s the “nut graf:”

In terms of the use of palm oil by ABC Bakers – Interbake Foods, I am pleased to be able to say that we are actively working on identifying soybean blends that can be substituted for palm oils in our products. The availability of such products is currently in short supply but there is a lot of promising research and development going on. We intend to be at the leading edge of the curve in using these new oils. In the meantime, we are limiting our use of palm oil to the minimum required to deliver the desired results.

You can help all US manufacturers achieve a more rapid and more dramatic reduction in the use of palm oil in this country by working to educate the American consumer to the fact that a smaller percentage of our income goes to pay for food than in any other country in the world. The US consumers demand for “more and more” and “better and better” at a lower and lower price is a contributor to the deforestation of the rainforest and other environmental concerns around the world. The result is that people in places like Indonesia have to clear more and more land in order to have even a barely sustainable existence. We must somehow live more simply so that others can simply live.”

As you can see, our vendor is working to find a replacement for palm oil. This is not something that happens overnight. Changing recipes is a science, as well as being dependent upon supply and demand–whatever is found to replace the palm oil needs to be available in sufficient quantities for manufacture. (Personally, I would love to see the tobacco fields in the US replaced by soy fields.)

Apparently, the issue is getting the chocolate chips to stay in the cookies during baking. I know, right? I bake vegan chocolate chip cookies that everyone who tastes them loves and I use canola oil or Earth Balance margarine, so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

Anyway, I posted to the Orangutan Foundation blog on Wildlife Direct about Mr. Bergerson’s response and got an interesting e-mail this morning from Mr. Allan Miller, Sales Director of Paterson Arran, the company that bakes cookies for the U.K.’s Girl Guides. According to the Orangutan Foundation, Patterson Arran leads “the UK biscuit industry in finding replacements for palm oil. They use olive and rapeseed oil in its place. As they told us, the transition wasn’t easy. On the first attempt at a palm oil free chocolate chip cookie, all the chocolate chips fell out! Fortunately, they persevered and managed to overcome the problem. Interestingly, Paterson Arran are always quick to point out the switch isn’t just good for orangutans; they calculated changing from palm oil resulted in a 60-70% reduction in saturated fat …”

Mr. Miller, in his e-mail message to me, asked for Mr. Bergerson’s contact information to offer assistance to the Girl Scout’s baking companies in solving the problem of finding a good palm oil replacement. How cool is that? I mean, really.

s.

Filed under: conservation, endangered species, palm oil