Palm Oil: Imports

(asked on 10th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of banning the import of palm oil into the UK.


Answered by
Graham Stuart Portrait
Graham Stuart
Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 18th December 2020

The Government does not propose to ban the import of palm oil. 70% of the UK’s palm oil imports were from sustainable sources in 2019. An import ban on unsustainable palm oil risks substitution with other oils which typically require significantly more land to produce and may lead to greater deforestation. We continue to work with producer countries to tackle the underlying issues of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Last month, the Government tabled a new ‘due diligence’ requirement under the Environment Bill to tackle illegal deforestation.

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