Nutella Sparks War Of Words Between European Environmental Ministers

First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.

There’s a storm brewing in Europe over a chocolate breakfast spread.

The French minister of ecology has Italy up in arms over comments she made about deforestation on French television Monday, during which she encouraged people to stop eating Nutella, an Italian-made chocolate hazelnut spread.

“We have to replant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to global warming. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it’s made with palm oil,” Ségolène Royal said. “Oil palms have replaced trees, and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment,” she added.

Italian politicians shot back Tuesday, with the Italian minister of the environment telling Royal to “leave Italian products alone.”

Another politician tweeted that Royal should apologize, calling her comments a “grave and ugly” insult.

Cutting down on palm oil use is seen as a key part of curbing deforestation — and carbon emissions. Palm oil is one of the most widely used ingredients in food, as well as health and beauty products.

Worldwide, oil palm plantations cover 40.6 million acres — an area larger than the entire state of Georgia, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Emissions due just to oil palm cultivation in Indonesia accounted for an estimated 2 to 9 percent of all tropical land use emissions from 2000 to 2010, the group found.

This is not the first time France has gone on the offensive against palm oil, or Nutella. A “Nutella Tax” was proposed in 2012 that would have quadrupled the tax on palm oil. That effort was driven largely by public health advocates.

In the meantime, Ferrero, the company that makes Nutella, has taken action to improve its environmental processes. In January, the company announced in a statement that 100 percent of its palm oil was certified as sustainable and segregated according to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a 2,000-member, not-for-profit organization that monitors the supply chain of sustainable palm oil.

In that same statement, the World Wildlife Fund applauded Ferrero for its efforts.

“In achieving 100 percent segregated certified sustainable palm oil within the context of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Ferrero has demonstrated that it is tackling tropical deforestation in a credible way,” said Richard Holland, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Market Transformation Initiative.

Ironically, while Nutella has been criticized for contributing to climate change, it could also be the victim. Ferrero buys about a quarter of the world’s hazelnuts, most of which is grown in Turkey. But last year, unseasonable storms there crippled hazelnut supply — pushing prices up 60 percent. While it is difficult to attribute specific weather events to climate change, changing weather patterns and increased severe weather due to global warming is putting many kinds of agriculture at risk. Sadly, that includes hazelnuts.

The post Nutella Sparks War Of Words Between European Environmental Ministers appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/17/3670585/france-italy-nutella-dispute/