15/11/2010 (Moreland Leader) - IF you’re chomping into a bikkie or doing a load of washing you’re not thinking of endangered animals.

But you should be.

Zoos Victoria community conservation manager Rachel Lowry said we are unwittingly pushing orang-utans to extinction because of our purchases.

“At the moment you just don’t know if the product you are buying contains palm oil,” Ms Lowry said. “Without legislation changes, palm oil will remain unlabelled.”

An estimated 40 per cent of food on the supermarket shelves contains palm oil, harvested from rainforest that is typically orang-utan habitat.

Palm oil can be found in ice-cream, chocolate, biscuits, chips, popcorn, margarine, crackers, cooking oil, frozen dinners, toothpaste, soap, detergents and cosmetics but under food labelling laws can be listed in ingredients only as ‘vegetable oil’.

Melbourne Zoo’s Don’t Palm Us Off campaign collected 130,000 signatures that have helped get a Bill introduced to Parliament to require manufacturers to accurately label palm oil products.

The Bill is being considered now and also provides for manufacturers to label use of palm oil as “certified sustainable”, so that consumers can be advised that although the product includes palm oil, it has been produced sustainably.

One of the zoo’s orang-utan families, Suntan, Maimunah and their son, Menyaru, are awaiting a new family member.