(From left) Kalyana, EU-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive officer Roberto Benetello and French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development resident regional director for Southeast Asia Dr Alain Rival. Photo by Sam Fong

13/10/2017 (The Edge Financial Daily) - Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) chief executive officer Dr Kalyana Sundram revealed that while the general consensus is that European end-users viewed palm oil as bad for the environment, he said most consumers in other countries like China, the US and Canada couldn’t care less.

“The average European perceives palm [oil] as evil, despite the functionality — that’s the message [we get from] social media.

“But if you go down to the ground and talk to [random] European customers, they don’t know anything about palm oil. In fact, I’m sorry to say, they don’t care about sustainability. They don’t pay much heed to [the issue of] sustainable palm oil,” he said.

However, Kalyana said there is growing awareness of sustainable palm oil among the younger generation, who is getting aware of the need for sustainability and environmental preservation.

Hence, Kalyana said one of the challenges MPOC now faces is to ensure that discrepancies around palm oil cultivation and production are reduced and the true message is delivered instead.

“It is not palm oil that is bad, it is where you cultivate [it] and how you cultivate it that becomes an issue — this has been advocated several times by WWF and elsewhere,” said Kalyana.

He was speaking on the topic “Setting the Scene of the Sustainability Issues of Palm Oil” at the Palm Oil Sustainability European Union-Malaysia International Discourse yesterday.