PepsiCo profits at the expense of people, planet: Rainforest Action Network

A new report reveals that the success of PepsiCo has come at a cost that the rest of the world is paying.

The Rainforest Action Network or RAN shows that PepsiCo is also earning billions by turning palm oil -- a cheap and controversial ingredient -- into its snacks and sugary fountain drinks sold across the globe.

"PepsiCo uses enough palm oil every single year to fill Pepsi cans full of palm oil that would stretch around the earth at the equator 4 times,” the report released on April 27 said.

RAN is headquartered in San Francisco, California with office staff in Tokyo, Japan, plus thousands of volunteer scientists, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens around the world.

Dubbed “some of the most-savvy environmental agitators in the business” by the Wall Street Journal, RAN uses hard-hitting markets campaigns to align the policies of multinational corporations with widespread public support for environmental protection.

Health concerns around snack foods and soda drinks like PepsiCo’s are nothing new.

But the report says that throughout the last few decades, there have been countless cases of industry lobbyists representing snack food giants, including PepsiCo and its sub-brand Frito-Lay, successfully pressuring the US Food and Drug Administration and other governments to change policy in their favour.

PepsiCo’s influence over policy has only grown and as it expands across the globe, so does its influence on foreign policy in the US and abroad.

bdnews24.com sought PepsiCo’s comment on the report on Apr 29 and waited for days but the company did not respond to the email.

“While PepsiCo seeks to rebrand itself as a healthy choice, and flex its corporate power in determining what is considered healthy or not, PepsiCo continues to sell products across the globe that are bad for the health of people and the planet,” according to the report.

“We’ve seen PepsiCo release its so-called sustainability agenda for 2025, in which the company claims it will deliver improved health and well-being through the products it sells, but the fact remains that PepsiCo peddles Conflict Palm Oil today,” Gemma Tillack, agribusiness campaign director for Rainforest Action Network or RAN, said in a statement.

“PepsiCo has a moral obligation to confront the fact that the conflict palm oil currently in its supply chain, and possibly in hundreds of its products the world over, is in fact deadly for people and the planet.”

Palm oil is now the world’s cheapest vegetable oil, which only contributes to its expansion. Even if it does not contain trans fats, there are other hidden problems with palm oil, however.

The low price of palm oil grown in Southeast Asia is a result of lax laws, exploitative labour conditions and a national lands allocation system that, in many cases, results in corporations stealing lands from communities without their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), according to the report.

“Decades of rainforest destruction in the name of economic advancement have pushed our planet to the brink of climate disaster.”

“Rainforest destruction has caused the extinction of countless species with even more on the horizon, and has destroyed lives, communities and cultures through a litany of human rights violations across the globe”.

RAN Executive Director Lindsey Allen wrote a letter to PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and said “to date, under your leadership, PepsiCo has not done enough to address the conflict palm oil in its supply chain”.

“As you seek to grow PepsiCo through new markets, and increasingly brand PepsiCo products as a healthy choice for families, you must confront the fact that PepsiCo’s use of conflict palm oil is in fact deadly for people, communities, vital ecosystems and our global climate”.

PepsiCo’s ‘business as usual’ approach to the cheap conflict palm oil in its supply chain means that it avoids the true cost of its business, while the rest of the world pays the bill, she wrote.