KUALA LUMPUR: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is generally considered the “gold standard” in palm oil certification. RSPO, a non-profit organisation, combines stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry that develop and implement global standards for a sustainable palm oil industry. “This isn’t surprising as close to 90 per cent of the world’s oil palm is grown in Southeast Asia. However, this criteria interferes with the control of blast disease, which affects crops, particularly oil palm seedlings in Africa. A severe case in Ghana in 1994 had totally wiped out the growing stock of the Ghana Oil Palm Development Company.

Source: New Strait Times October 05, 2016 05:01 UTC