According to marketing manager Trevor Pomery, Golden North had spent a year eliminating palm oil from its products and that both the Monarto and Adelaide Zoos had heavily promoted that fact that the product was free of the controversial ingredient, ABC News reports.
Pomery says that Streets Ice Cream, which will now be sold instead of Golden North uses palm oil in its products.
Palm oil is the world’s most widely used edible oil with an estimated 50 percent of products on Australian supermarket shelves comprising the ingredient. The controversy surrounding palm oil relates to mass deforestation which is taking place in Malaysia and Indonesia to make way for palm oil plantations, with obvious implications for native species, especially the endangered orangutan.
Pomery said that Golden North still has a year to on its contract but received a letter from the Zoos SA on July 3 informing them of the changes. Pomery said that the company went to great lengths to eliminate palm oil from its products.
"[We are] very frustrated and somewhat disappointed in that we put in a lot of time and effort to become palm oil-free," Pomery told ABC News.
"I don't want to go on a moral high ground, but they've backflipped."
Chief executive of Zoos SA, Elaine Bensted said that the decision to drop Golden North in favour of Streets was predominantly a financial one
"It does have a financial benefit to the zoo and I won't shy away from that, and it is a significant component," she said.
"We're a not-for-profit charity, we have a responsibility to our members and that membership responsibility does include financial sustainability.
Bensted said Streets were aware of ethical concerns relating to the use of palm oil and that the company had promised to exclusively source the ingredient from sustainable sources by 2020.
"We wanted to make sure that we were using our buying power to try and drive different behaviour and sustainable behaviour in the people that we make purchases from."
