Greenpeace Aotearoa is calling on the NZ dairy industry to end its use of palm kernel expeller (PKE), after the Indonesian Medan City offices of NZ’s primary supplier Wilmar International were raided last week with cash and assets seized as part of a corruption case connected to palm oil exports.

PKE is a product of the palm oil industry. Christine Rose, lead agriculture campaigner at Greenpeace Aotearoa, says "New Zealand is the world’s largest user of PKE, at around two million tonnes a year worth over $800 million, where it is fed to dairy cows. It is used to drive the NZ dairy industry’s intensive stocking rates beyond the natural limits of the land. And the industry’s main supplier, Wilmar International, is now implicated in corruption. The company already has established links to illegal palm oil production, driving rainforest destruction, biodiversity loss and wildfires."

"The intensive dairy industry is our biggest climate polluter, with dairy cattle alone producing a quarter of our country’s emissions. The industry relies on imported palm kernel expeller to achieve these high stocking rates.

"This summer, we saw the impacts of climate change firsthand. Farmers in the South Island were on the frontlines of intense drought, while in the North Island, flooding as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle devastated entire communities," says Rose.

"Ultimately, we need to phase out imported feeds like PKE. They’re enabling industrial dairy at a level that is not only superheating the climate but also polluting rivers and contaminating rural communities’ drinking water. All political parties should recognise that the dairy industry’s primary PKE supplier being implicated in corruption is yet another canary in the coal mine - it’s time to support New Zealand farmers to transition to ecological farming methods that don't rely on harmful inputs like PKE."

A petition from Greenpeace Aotearoa, signed by over 16,000 people, calls for the Government to phase out imported feed like PKE.

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