The Colonel is killing tigers.
Greenpeace International has released a report accusing Kentucky Fried Chicken of using food packaging made with wood from rainforest trees in Indonesia.
According to the report, independent tests were conducted on KFC food boxes in China, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom. Rolf Skar, forest campaign director for Greenpeace, said that over half of the materials used in KFC chicken buckets came from rain forest trees.
The independent studies were conducted by the Institution for Paper Science and Technology in Darmstadt, Germany, and Integrated Paper Service in Appleton, Wisconsin. The companies tested KFC's buckets and found that seven out of ten food boxes from KFCs in the UK were made with rainforest tree fiber.
Yum! Brands, the manufacturer of said chicken buckets, buys its materials from Sinar Mas Group's pulp paper unit, Asia Pulp & Paper. Greenpeace has stated that Asia Pulp has been harvesting wood from the Indonesian rainforest, home of the endangered Sumatran tiger.
Skar says, "A big customer like KFC, they're massive in places like China and Indonesia, they have a lot of control over where they get their paper."
KFC is massive in China? Okay...
Greenpeace supporters protested the deforestation by hanging a sign on Yum's headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky last week.
A spokesman for Yum said in an email that sixty percent of the paper used by Yum comes from sustainable forests and that the Greenpeace protest was a publicity stunt. A publicity stunt? Really? Where does the other forty percent of your paper come from?
The Sumatran tiger is being pushed closer to extinction through Sinar's logging of ramin trees, says Skar. Ramin grows in peat land swamp forests, the natural habitat of the Sumatran tiger. The Sumatran is one of six subspecies and is classified as critically endangered. There are approximately 400 left in the wild according to the World Wildlife Federation.
Asia Pulp & Paper issued a statement after the report was released. "We welcome the recent report from Greenpeace International and will study it carefully to ensure that we identify and act on any weaknesses in our chain of custody systems."
Nestle and at least 60 other companies have stopped doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper. KFC has yet to comment on the report.
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