Cargill To "Engage" Indonesian Supplier After Audit Confirms Primary Forest Destruction

[hatrack]

Ooh! Take that! Consider yourself "engaged"!

Cargill will engage one of its major palm oil suppliers after an independent audit confirmed that the Indonesian company has been destroying rainforests and peatlands in Borneo to establish oil palm plantations.

The company, PT Smart (SMART), and its owner Golden Agri-Resources, earlier this month tried to spin the audit to claim that it cleared the company of environmental wrongdoing but were quickly rebuked by one of the auditors involved in the investigation. The Ranforest Action Network (RAN), an activist group campaigning against unsustainable palm oil, subsequently used the episode to pressure Cargill on its earlier commitment to drop SMART as a supplier if it was found to be engaged in forest destruction and did not clean up its operations. On Thursday, RAN issued a statement accusing Cargill of breaking its promise to end its relationship with Sinar Mas, the conglomerate that controls PT Smart and Golden Agri-Resources.

"Despite this announcement making clear Sinar Mas' culpability for rainforest destruction, Cargill is failing to keep its promise, which was to drop Sinar Mas as a supplier if the company was found to be destroying rainforests," RAN said in the press release.

But on Friday, Cargill rejected RAN's claim, saying the environmental group was "misrepresenting" the agricultural giant's position. "RAN is misrepresenting Cargill's position on PT SMART (Sinar Mas)," Susan Eich, Director of Corporate Responsibility Communications for Cargill, said via email. "Since the allegations were originally made by Greenpeace about PT SMART, Cargill has consistently stated that if the allegations were proven correct and PT SMART did not take corrective action we would delist it as a supplier."

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0827-cargill_sinar_mas.html