Nestle bows to Greenpeace pressure with beefed up palm oil policy

After months of criticism from campaign group Greenpeace over its alleged use of palm oil grown in illegal plantations on previously forested land, Nestle yesterday announced a major overhaul of the food giant's supply chain policy designed to help bring an end to rainforest destruction.

The company's executive vice president José Lopez announced that the company would partner with independent NGO The Forest Trust to develop a more responsible supply chain policy that takes better account of environmental and social issues.

The move makes Nestle the first global food company to join the TFT and will lead to the adoption of new Responsible Sourcing Guidelines and a systematic overhaul of current suppliers to ensure that they do not own or manage "high risk plantations or farms linked to deforestation".

Under the new guidelines, the company has pledged to ensure that all its palm oil is derived from plantations and farms that operate in compliance with local laws, protect high conservation value forest areas, support indigenous and local communities and protect peatlands.

The company said that it would also work with TFT to accelerate plans to ensure that all of the palm oil it uses comes from suppliers that are certified as sustainable by 2015, conduct regular audits to check suppliers comply with the guidelines and ban any plantations found to be in breach of the new rules.

It added that the new guidelines would be enforced with "immediate effect". It added that the guidelines would initially only cover palm oil, but vowed to work with TFT to see how they could be extended to cover the supply chain for paper products.

The announcement was hailed as major victory by Greenpeace, which has been in engaged in a high profile campaign that accused Nestle's flagship Kit Kat product of being complicit in the destruction of valuable Orang-utan habitats through its use of palm oil that was linked to deforestation.