“Dromio of Syracuse: Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat;
or bespeak a long spoon.

Antiophilus of Syracuse: Why, Dromio?

Dromio of Syracuse: Marry, he must have a long spoon
that must sup with the devil.

Shakespeare
Comedy of Errors, IV, iii

Shakespeare was alluding to the fact that if you keep bad company you will need to be on your guard. Sharing a meal with someone usually means you are already on quite good terms with them or that you want to get to know them better. If you agree to partake of the devil's hospitality, you are on dangerous ground and need to beware.

The reference to a long spoon is obscure; probably it emphasizes the distance it is necessary to keep from the potent contamination of the devil.

Fast forward to the recent The Guardian and Today programmes' revelations that the eminent British epidemiologist, Richard Doll was paid to do research for the chemicals industry are the latest in a series of media exposes of scientists' links with industry. Investigative journalists have shocked many with the news that a string of supposedly independent scientists advising us on some of the hottest topics of the day are in the pay of industry and by implication not to be trusted.

In the last few years, media reports have written off the entire scientific advisory panel on GM crops because some members had ties to industry; launched an attack on a highly respected MMR expert because she happened to be on the same side as vaccine manufacturers in a legal challenge and accused one of Europe's leading nutritionists of attacking the Atkins Diet because her institution once received a grant from the Flour Advisory Bureau.

The apparently ever increasing links between science and industry are definitely a subject worthy of investigation and if anything there are too few journalists with the time to pursue potential conflicts of interest in this area. But the problem with the Richard Doll story and many other similar 'exposes' is that the journalists don't feel the need to come up with the hard proof that a link with industry has corrupted the independent scientist and his or her research findings.

In many ways, this unfortunate revelations bespeaks of the current state of the environmental movement, in particular vis a vis palm oil.  The sheer incongruity of the actions of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth towards palm oil, which is obviously the most inherently sustainable of all oilseed crops raises the uncomfortable specter of these “environmental organizations” supping with the devil!

In all likelihood the devil, in this instance, incarnated in the form of a rival commodity fearful of the rise of palm oil’s popularity as an edible oil and biofuel and ever willing to fund the anti-palm oil campaigns stage-managed by these “green groups” !

Certainly, a pattern can be discerned of the stratagem employed by anti-palm oil lobbies to wage their trade war against palm oil.

Using proxies such as the infamous Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and diverse organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) and, in recent times, even zoos such as the Melbourne Zoo and the Auckland Zoo ( who, of all people conducted a campaign to protect one of their exhibits, the orang utan from the “relentless expansion of palm oil plantations”), the lobbies have invested in various ploys to stop the growth of palm oil in its tracks. 

First CSPI launched a campaign in the mid eighties alleging that palm oil was largely saturated fat and thus unhealthy. When tons of scientific studies were conducted and the results published in peer reviewed journals showing that a palm oil rich diet was, in fact heart friendly as it lowered serum cholesterol and increased HDL (good) cholesterol (see: “The Truth About Palm Oil” http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=329&Itemid=811)

, CSPI beat a hasty retreat and bided their time whilst planning a new mode of attack against palm oil.

Almost 2 decades later, CSPI thought out a new stratagem.  This time, in a report called “Cruel Oil: How Palm Oil Harms Health, Rainforest and Wildlife”, CSPI sought to paint a picture of utter devastation of pristine rainforest by the palm oil industry and hence causing massive deforestation and threatening the extinction of the orang utan.

Before long, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth joined the bandwagon issuing “reports” with such emotive tiles as “Cooking the Climate”, “The Oil for Ape Scandal” and “Rainforest in your Shopping”.Both outfits organized loud and theatrical demonstrations often dressed in orang utan suits.

There was only one thing wrong with the anti-palm oil campaigns organized by these disparate groups of environmental NGOs and this strikes at the heart of their anti-palm oil stance - palm cultivation has a lower carbon footprint than all other biofuel operations. 

It is clear that palm oil has some distinct advantages over biofuel made from rapeseed, in particular as it generates around 10 times the amount of energy that it consumes in production, compared to a ratio of just 3 for rapeseed oil. In this way it has a much smaller land footprint. As a low-carbon alternative to coal and petrol, and given its relatively small environmental footprint, palm oil is actually quite useful in the global fight against climate change.

Given the intransigence of the environmental NGOs such as CSPI, Greenpeace and FOE towards palm oil, one cannot dismiss the sneaky feeling that they may, in this instance, be supping with the devil!

Of course, palm oil's enormous efficiency advantages have European producers nervous. And so in the face of agricultural fuel competition from abroad, the European Union has, under pressure from the aforementioned green groups, restricted imports to protect its domestic and politically powerful subsidised producers. And now they are pressing their case in Copenhagen, advancing trade protectionism under the banner of environmental concern.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, this naked hypocrisy on display exposes a  brazen attempt to protect domestic vegetable oil producers in the EU from competition from palm oil and is a serious violation of the EU’s own rules on free competition and a breach of WTO rules on free trade.

In the final analysis, no one seemed to be in any doubt that green groups needed to sup with the devil. Given the traction that they appear to have gained with the EU, the accusation against the Greenpeace and FOE bosses was that they were sleeping with the devil too.

THE END