Perth Voice Interactive

NORTHBRIDGE trader Evan Kakulas has pulled from sale all palm oil products in his William Street shop after learning they were leading to the deaths of orangutans.

“I am an animal lover,” he says. “I try to look after the swans in my backyard too.”

He’s recently posted a sign at Kakulas Brothers telling patrons “all palm oil products have been permanently discontinued due to irrefutable evidence of its damage to our environment and rainforests”.

Mr Kakulas has been going over labels and scouring the shelves of products that contain palm oil from Borneo and Sumatra.

“When they destroy these rainforests to plant these palm trees, it gets rid of the orangutans’ habitat,” he says.

The gentle primates are slow-moving and unable to escape fires set to clear land, or are shot as pests by farmers. The WWF says they’re also vulnerable to poaching as illegal pets.

Despite some popular products disappearing from the shelves-—like pure palm oil favoured by African chefs—Mr Kakulas says he’s yet to have a single complaint once people understand his reasons.

“It’s been 100 per cent positive,” he says, even from “people on Facebook I’ve never heard of” after a passerby posted the sign online.

Mr Kakulas practised law most of his life before taking over the family business and becoming fascinated with health foods. These days he eats dried cranberries and cocoa nibs by the handful, along with special mixtures in a half-dozen other containers.

Palm oil is not the first ingredient he’s pulled from the shelves, having previously discontinued monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Now he’d like to see stronger labelling laws to better identify products with genetically modified materials in them. Right now it’s too opaque, he says, meaning people are robbed of making an informed choice.

For more information on the impacts of palm oil on orangutan, visit http://www.orangutan.org.au

by DAVID BELL