Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to ensure that the labelling on products containing palm oil specifies whether that palm oil was produced sustainably.

Defra is committed to supporting the implementation of deforestation-free supply chains for key commodities, including palm oil. We are a signatory to the Amsterdam Declarations and have endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests which support a fully sustainable palm oil supply chain from 2020. We are also a member of Tropical Forest Alliance 2020; a public-private co-operation working to help organisations achieve their deforestation-free commitments.

In 2012 Defra published the UK Statement on the Sustainable Production of Palm Oil; which was signed by trade associations, NGOs and Government. The 2017 review notes that signatories have achieved a high level of success in delivering the Statement’s ambition of working towards 100% sourcing of credibly certified sustainable palm oil by the end of 2015. There are no plans to implement a separate policy requiring products containing palm oil to be labelled to specify sustainable production.