Activists Occupy Cargill US HQ

May 5, 2010

Update: five activists locked them­selves to the stair­case of the Lake Office, block­ing the entrance to the company’s exec­u­tive offices for over two hours. All five activists were arrest­ed.

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Nation’s Largest Pri­vate Agribusi­ness Com­pa­ny Under Fire for Rain­for­est Destruc­tion

Wayza­ta, Minn. – Six activists with Rain­for­est Action Net­work (RAN) have tak­en over the exec­u­tive offices of the nation’s largest pri­vate agribusi­ness com­pa­ny. Play­ing a loud record­ing of chain­saws cut­ting down rain­forests and hold­ing signs read­ing “This is the sound of your sup­ply chain,” and “Mr. Page: Rain­for­est Destruc­tion Stops with You,” the activists have locked them­selves to the stair­case of the Lake Office, block­ing the entrance to the company’s exec­u­tive offices.

A dozen demon­stra­tors are con­duct­ing a sol­i­dar­i­ty vig­il at the front of Cargill’s Wayza­ta head­quar­ters, greet­ing employ­ees as they enter with a 12 ft paper mache orang­utan and a sign read­ing: “Rain­for­est Destruc­tion Starts with Cargill.”

The activists have request­ed a meet­ing with Gre­go­ry Page, Cargill’s CEO, and are refus­ing to leave until he agrees to stop destroy­ing rain­forests and to imple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive palm oil pol­i­cy cov­er­ing its entire sup­ply chain.

“Cargill has been lying to its cus­tomers and to our com­mu­ni­ty,” said Eric Nielsen, local activist par­tic­i­pat­ing in today’s protest. “We want CEO Greg Page to act now to stop Cargill’s destruc­tion of rain­forests before it’s too late.”

The protest comes in the wake of a damn­ing report direct­ly link­ing Cargill, the nation’s largest importer of palm oil, to rain­for­est destruc­tion in Bor­neo. The report, released yes­ter­day, doc­u­ments sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures by Cargill to com­ply with inter­na­tion­al palm oil stan­dards and respect Indone­sian law through­out its palm oil sup­ply chain. The report also doc­u­ments rain­for­est destruc­tion on two plan­ta­tions that Cargill owns, but has hid­den from the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment and its cus­tomers. Over 10,500 hectares of rain­for­est have been destroyed since 2005, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­flict with tra­di­tion­al and Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

“Cargill has destroyed an area of rain­for­est the size of Dis­ney World in Bor­neo, endan­ger­ing orang­utans, pol­lut­ing water­ways and tak­ing land and liveli­hoods from local com­mu­ni­ties,” said Leila Salazar-Lopez of Rain­for­est Action Net­work. “How unsus­tain­able can a com­pa­ny be?”

Palm oil is one of the most com­mon­ly found ingre­di­ents in thou­sands of con­sumer prod­ucts, from soap and lip­stick, to break­fast cere­al and soymilk. Its use is wide­spread and increas­ing around the world, but par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States, where its con­sump­tion has tripled in the last five years. As the nation’s largest importer of palm oil, Cargill sup­plies the com­mon­ly used ingre­di­ent to some of the nation’s largest food com­pa­nies, includ­ing Gen­er­al Mills, Nes­tle, Mars and Kraft, mak­ing it like­ly that almost all Amer­i­cans have bought Cargill’s palm oil some­time with­in the last week.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, palm oil has been tight­ly linked to the destruc­tion of some of the world’s remain­ing rain­forests. Expand­ing con­sump­tion has trig­gered expand­ed pro­duc­tion, replac­ing once lush rain­forests with palm oil plan­ta­tions and endan­ger­ing unique species includ­ing orang­utans and sun bears.

The full report on Cargill’s activ­i­ties, enti­tled Cargill’s Prob­lems with Palm Oil, A Burn­ing Threat to Bor­neo, can be down­loaded at: http: www.ran.org/cargillreport