The TLDR: Most woke folks know that palm oil is bad for the environment and for your health. A shocking Associated Press investigation has now revealed global palm oil’s real dirty secret: the sexual exploitation of women in the plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia. Oh, and the biggest consumer of palm oil: India. It is in almost everything you eat—and in almost every beauty product you use.

[Trigger warning: This story focuses on sexual violence.]

Basic deets

• Palm oil consumption has increased with dizzying speed, and production has risen to keep pace. Between 1980 to 2015, global production of the oil increased from 5 million to more than 62 million metric tons.
• Indonesia and Malaysia account for over 82% of world palm oil production.
• We are the world’s biggest palm oil importer in the world, constituting 20% of all global trade.
• And 70% of our palm oil comes from Indonesia, the rest from Malaysia.
• 90% of the palm oil is consumed in the form of cooking oil. Around 10% ends up in processed foods and cosmetics.
• Palm oil constitutes 65% of all edible oils consumed in India.

Palm oil’s dirty secret

The investigation: Associated Press is the first to do an in-depth investigation into the treatment of women who work on palm oil plantations. Until now all the attention has been on the environmental effects of the industry (more on that later). AP talked to three dozen women and girls from at least 12 companies—who spoke to its reporters in fear for their life. Also: 200 other workers, activists, government officials and lawyers.

Who are these women: Generations of women work on these plantations—often starting as children. They live in shacks on the plantation and are often “casual” daily labourers. Their jobs are precarious and dangerous:

“Women are burdened with some of the industry’s most difficult and dangerous jobs, spending hours waist-deep in water tainted by chemical runoff and carrying loads so heavy that, over time, their wombs can collapse and protrude. Many are hired by subcontractors on a day-to-day basis without benefits, performing the same jobs for the same companies for years—even decades. They often work without pay to help their husbands meet otherwise impossible daily quotas.”

The sexual violence: Working conditions are terrible on plantations, but women have it far worse. Men get all the full time jobs, and are also supervisors. Rape is routine on these plantations—as is sexual exploitation where women are expected to trade their bodies for jobs. Complaints are ignored both by the companies and the police. AP has more details of the violence which we have not included, but this bit sums up how routine it is:

“The AP heard about similar incidents on plantations big and small in both countries. Union representatives, health workers, government officials and lawyers said some of the worst examples they encountered involved gang rapes and children as young as 12 being taken into the fields and sexually assaulted by plantation foremen.”

Point to note: Palm oil companies have increasingly turned to overseas labour to meet the soaring global demand. Migrants are lured from neighbouring countries, also Bangladesh, Nepal and India—and then find themselves trapped as slave labour on these plantations. AP covered that aspect here.

Our palm oil addiction

It is almost impossible to avoid palm oil in our life. The stuff is everywhere:

• It’s the main ingredient in any kind of vanaspati—the cheap alternative to ghee. This is also why all roadside stalls use palm oil.
• Even “pure” versions of mustard, sunflower, and rapeseed are adulterated with palm oil.
• It’s used by every fast food restaurant including Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, and Carl’s Jr.
• And every packet of snack is drowning in palm oil—including Haldiram’s, Lay’s, Kurkure, and Cheetos. Also: Maggi noodles.
• It’s used in lipsticks and as a moisturising agent in most shampoos, soaps and, well, moisturisers.

Point to note: Palm oil is rarely listed by its proper name. It usually appears in the list of ingredients as:

“Vegetable Oil, Vegetable Fat, Palm Kernel, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Fruit Oil, Palmate, Palmitate, Palmolein, Glyceryl, Stearate, Stearic Acid, Elaeis Guineensis, Palmitic Acid, Palm Stearine, Palmitoyl Oxostearamide, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-3, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Sodium Kernelate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate, Hyrated Palm Glycerides, Etyl Palmitate, Octyl Palmitate, Palmityl Alcohol.”

Yeah, it's that crazy!

The secret of its popularity

The price: It is the cheapest available cooking oil. Example: Ration shops in Tamil Nadu sell palm oil at Rs 25 per litre. The price of soy or sunflower oil ranges from Rs 125-200. Or take Delhi, where a branded litre of mustard oil is Rs 115 compared to Rs 70 for Ruchi’s vanaspati. 

But it’s not just less affluent Indians who are price-conscious. Take what happened with Pepsico India, which first swapped out palm oil for the more health-conscious rice bran oil in Cheetos in 2007—but quietly reversed itself in 2012 to cut costs. As one expert explains: “Oil is an expensive part of junk food”—often constituting 4-10% of the food item. FYI: A bag of Cheetos in the US is cooked in sunflower, corn, and canola oils.

The ‘magical qualities’: The West pivoted away from soy and corn, and turned to palm oil for other good reasons:

“It had a long shelf life, remained nearly solid at room temperature and didn’t smoke up kitchens, even when used for deep-frying… It helps keep oily substances from separating and turns instant noodles into steaming cups of soup, just by adding hot water…. it’s equally useful in a host of cleansers and makeup products. It bubbles in shampoo, foams in Colgate toothpaste, moisturizes Dove soap and helps keep lipstick from melting.”

Point to note: L’Oréal and Unilever—two of the biggest palm oil buyers for consumer goods, which source from more than 1,500 mills—have built their brand around female empowerment messages. 

Where’s the outrage?

Much of the outrage has focused on the environmental effects of palm oil plantations. The World Rainforest Movement has focused on the unprecedented rates of deforestation caused by rising palm oil production. The World Wildlife Fund has campaigned for orangutans, the Sumatran tiger and Javan rhinoceros—all of whom are on the brink of extinction. 

But, but, but: almost no one has raised the brutal treatment of the plantation workers—especially the sexual violence against women. Even the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)—an alliance of growers, buyers, traders and environmental watchdogs that promotes “ethical” production—has preferred to focus on more consumer-friendly ‘green’ issues.

As Associated Press notes:

“Many beauty and personal goods companies have largely remained silent when it comes to the plight of female workers, but it’s not due to lack of knowledge.

 

A powerful global industry group, the Consumer Goods Forum, published a 2018 report alerting the network’s 400 CEOs that women on plantations were exposed to dangerous chemicals and ‘subject to the worst conditions among all palm oil workers.’ It also noted that a few local groups had cited examples of women being forced to provide sex to secure or keep jobs, but said few workers were willing to discuss the sensitive issue.”

And that may explain why a number of mills and plantations investigated by the AP had the RSPO seal—despite the blatant and brutal exploitation of their labour.

The bottomline: Here’s a good question to ask the next time we buy a sustainable product: What is its definition of “ethical”—and who is rendered invisible by it?

Reading list

• Both parts of the Associated Press investigation are a must read: part one focuses on slave labour; part two on sexual violence. 
• The Nation has a must-read for all Indians—the devastating health impact of our addiction to palm oil. 
• Scroll has a long read on how India can use its buying power to promote ethical palm oil production—with not a word about the labour, of course, or RSPO’s refusal to acknowledge the issue.
• Vogue looks at palm oil in the beauty industry—again, solely through a climate change lens.
• The Wire explains how a once atmanirbhar India became dependent on imports of edible oil, particularly palm.