MISSION STATEMENT
POFCAP's goals are 2 fold ;
1) To enable consumers, who wish to avoid palm oil for allergy, dietary or ethical reasons, to see at a quick glance if a product, company or process is palm oil free. When consumers see the certification trademark on a product's packaging or as a part of a company's marketing that they know it has been thoroughly researched and certified by an International and Independent Certification Trademark Programme.
2) To create a alternate funding stream and distribute all profit from this Certification Trademark back into organisations working hard to protect rainforests around the world and all they contain.
WHY IS THERE A NEED FOR THIS CERTIFICATION TRADEMARK?
Many palm oil free claims are made by companies who's products are not palm oil free. Most of these incorrect claims are innocent and are due to the lack of knowledge that 1,000's of ingredients are made from palm oi most, do not have the word palm in their ingredient name eg cetyl alcohol.
This Palm Oil Free Certification Trademark was also created because whilst we support the idea of the palm oil industry being encouraged to produce 100% certified sustainable palm oil currently only 19% of all palm oil produced is said to be certified sustainable and that has taken the RSPO nearly 20 years to achieve. Of that 'certified' palm oil much of it is from a supply chain called mixed balance (MB). Mixed balance is a combination of certified palm oil mixed with non certified palm oil therefore our team doesn't consider MB to be certified palm oil, how can it be if it is not pure? The other questionable aspect of MB is that at one stage we tried to find out the percentage of MB which was certified palm oil and what percentage was un-certified palm oil. We tried to ascertain this information by asking the RSPO. Our first response from the RSPO was that they didn't understand our question! So we rephrased the question and asked again....they still didnt understand our question so we rephrased our question a second time and still no answer. Then we got passed onto to another RSPO staff member who may be able to help us and then another until we stopped replying as it was obvious they were just wasting our time and were not going to tell us. Now if the RSPO can't answer that question who can?
We truly believe the effort to protect the world's rainforests requires a
multi-pronged approach and will not be tackled by one organisation alone or without consumers.
We recognise all the work being undertaken by these organisations and know that they have all been working hard over the last 17 years to discourage deforestation and educate both the public and the industry.
Our Palm Oil Free Certification Trademark will accept applications for any product in any category and any service or company.
We understand many people wish to avoid products that contain palm oil and palm oil derivatives. Up until now, partly due to the complexity of palm oil and its multitude of derivatives there was no easy way to determine if a product was genuinely palm oil free. This issue drove us to develop a Certification Programme which guarantees consumers that any product that displays our Palm Oil Free Certification Trademark has been audited & certified by POFCAP using strict international criteria, rules and standards.
