Malaysia will send representatives to Australia for a committee hearing to be held before the bill that requires palm oil labelling is debated at Australia’s parliamentary level.
This would be another effort in correcting the misconceptions towards Malaysia’s palm oil practices, following Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok’s recent visit to the land Down Under. “As we know the Australian Senate has passed the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling - Palm Oil Bill) … But before the Lower House of the Australian Parliament’s debate, there will be a hearing at the committee level. We are also sending representatives and the hearing this time will be on the economic aspects and what we will explain to the Australians is that the palm oil industry has lifted a lot of Malaysians out of the poverty trap especially in rural areas, with not less than 600,000 people directly or indirectly employed in the plantation industry,” he said after a function here yesterday.
He said Australians should be aware that smallholders represented 40% of the industry, which meant if this commodity should be labelled as something unsafe to consume, it would affect the source of livelihood for a lot of people in Malaysia.
On when the committee hearing would be held, he said Australian Parliament had set an Aug 15 deadline for those wanting to present a case and a hearing would be fixed thereafter.
