4/3/06 KUALA LUMPUR (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Palm Oil Promotion Council (MPOPC) will go for aggressive promotion, backed by scientific findings to enhance the credibility of the golden crop in the world market.

"We have been underclaiming the goodness of palm oil," said its newly appointed chief executive officer, Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron recently.

For instance, palm olein is actually better than olive oil in terms of nutritional value based on studies conducted by MPOPC but sadly, nobody was saying this and people are not being informed of the advantage.

"We want to make valid claims based on scientific findings. You will be able to see such claims in a short period of time on MPOPC's website," he told Bernama in an interview.

MPOPC was also focusing on enhancing the contribution of palm oil to the sustainability of the environment.

"When there are anti palm oil campaigns, we don't shout back with empty slogans but based on valid research outcomes. We have so far succeeded but it is not going to stop there, we want to go a step further," said Yusof, who was previously director-general of Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB).

He replaced Datuk Harun Siraj, 62, who retired on Jan 6, 2006.

Yusof noted that palm oil has always been labelled as a threat to orang utan by some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the western world.

"For me, this (anti palm oil campaign) is economic sabotage of the highest order. They are not far from the current group who are labelled as terrorists. Palm oil is our lifeline and they are keen to destroy this," he said.

Such approach is dangerous and "we have to defend it strongly."

He said that MPOPC would continue to strive and voice out palm oil's positive attributes: "We are here to stay and feed the world with food sources, raw materials and potential renewable energy source."

Going forward, he said that MPOPC was formulating supplementary activities to continuously enhance the image of palm oil and its acceptance by consumers.

Among others, he said that there were plans in the pipeline to set up Malaysian Palm Oil Conservation Fund, where MPOPC would be the guardian.

"We are collecting lots of revenue from our palm oil industry. We are prepared to re-invest this revenue partly to set up this fund that can help contribute to greater conservation effort in whatever forms," he said.

The fund would also help the NGOs see things at a different perspective.

"The fund will be available for any kind of conservation effort, in any part of the world. It can be for the whales and wolves as well," he said.

However, he declined to reveal the amount or when it would be launched.

"This is a big programme that we are pushing. The role is to get this people to see how their actions are affecting the livelihood of our people."

MPOPC, he said was ready to discuss with the NGOs on the conservation efforts and issues based on factual matters.

He said that palm oil was the only commodity which could cope with the rise in edible oil demand annually of between four and five million tonnes.

As for soy, he said that for every one million tonnes of additional oil, it needed about eight million hectares of new land but for oil palm plantation it could be done with one tenth of the land required for soy oil production.

"Clearly, palm oil is the most viable crop to meet the extending challenge in edible oil needs as well as renewable energy source because very little land is needed to keep up with the pace of growing demand," he said

-- BERNAMA