South Australian zoos, palm-oil free Golden North ice-cream reach positive three-year deal

IT’S a jungle out there. But you won’t believe how your run-of-the-mill ice-cream is creating a threat to the animal world — in more ways than one.

Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Sumatra. Indonesia

THE ice-cream you’re eating outside the Orangutan enclosure has been contributing to the deaths of monkeys.

How? Palm oil. It’s in the ice-cream. And it’s been linked to the unsustainable clearing of tropical forests, threatening the habitats of orangutans and other animals.

But in some good news for the monkeys Adelaide Zoo this week — the organisation has signed a three-year contract with the palm oil-free local ice-creamery Golden North.

The agreement between Zoos SA and Golden North affords the ice-cream maker a 50 per cent share of fridge space at Adelaide and Monarto zoos.

The other 50 per cent is occupied by the Streets Ice Cream brand, whose parent company Unilever is working hard to ensure its products are palm oil free or use palm oil bought from sustainable sources.

For background, Golden North has been in a five-year fight to keep its real estate at South Australia’s zoos. It was contacted five years ago by Zoos SA and asked if any of its products contained palm oil. Zoos SA told Golden North that it could stock its products at the zoos if it could guarantee none of its products contained palm oil.

A spokesman for Golden North said this week that it took a year to contact all of its suppliers and guarantee no palm oil was used in any of its products.

That satisfied Zoos SA temporarily until last August when it announced it was dumping the local supplier. The decision, thought to have been made for financial reasons, was quickly reversed after Zoos SA received backlash from members of the public, its own staff and outspoken South Australian Senator Nick Xenephon.

Zoos SA chief executive Elaine Bensted admitted at the time the zoo had underestimated the strong level of support for Golden North.

“I think any level of feedback, and there has been an enormous amount particularly through social media, has created damage to the brand,” she told reporters.

“We need the support of the community, and so we’ve responded and hopefully can rebuild the confidence and trust.”

She agreed to work with Streets and Golden North on a new arrangement, one reached and agreed upon when pens went to paper this week.

Trevor Pomery from Golden North told news.com.au that the three-year agreement is “very fair” and allows consumers to “choose with their wallets”.

Under the new deal, Streets and Golden North will split fridge space evenly. But staff at the zoos will tally the number of sales after 12 months (March 1, 2016) and allocate fridge space based on the number of sales. Basically, if Golden North sells 70 per cent of all ice creams at South Australian zoos next year, it will be given 70 per cent of fridge space the following year.

Ms Bensted said last year a “total boycott of palm oil” was not the way forward “(but) we think that a move to sustainable palm oil is”.

The World Wildlife Fund says palm oil is found in about half of all packaged products in Australian supermarkets and Australia imports about 110,000 tonnes of palm oil annually.