5.5 Monocultures
What supply policies does the company establish with regard to conflictive monocultures (palm oil, soybeans and cotton)?
About the data
This metric is part of Eticonsum's research study on the evaluation of companies in the Retail Food sector on environmental, social and ethical issues.
Eticonsum is a non-profit market research agency specialising in ESG (environment, social, governance) corporate performance applied to consumer insights.
We research and analyse the ethical market in the FMCG sector and evaluate the environmental and social performance of companies in order to help both conscious consumers to decide according to their values and companies to compete on ethical reputation.
With this metric, we aim to provide insight into and compare the actions and policies of the main retailers in Spain regarding the use of monocultures (palm oil, soy and cotton) in their own-brand products and their recognition of their environmental impact.
The expansion of palm oil crops, especially in Southeast Asia, has been associated with the deforestation of tropical forests, the appropriation of land belonging to indigenous communities, human rights abuses and the death of different animal species, such as elephants and orangutans.
The WHO (World Health Organisation) denounces that the palm oil industry is using similar tactics to the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research related to the health effects of palm oil. It is an industry that according to the WHO has ""little control"" and whose ""main concerns"" are around the effect of exposure to palm oil particles on foetal and infant mortality.
According to Greenpeace's "Hooked on Meat" report, approximately half of the soy produced globally is GM. The technology on which the different GM soya varieties are based is owned by a small handful of multinationals led by Bayer. Their main aim is to make the GM plants resistant to herbicide spraying. Of the GM soya grown in Brazil, 40% is genetically modified to be herbicide tolerant and 60% is genetically modified to be both glyphosate tolerant and insect resistant. Similarly, in Argentina, 83% of GM soybeans are tolerant to herbicides (again, mostly glyphosate) and 17% to insects.
The large-scale conversion of natural habitats to intensive soybean cultivation and the heavy reliance on GM seeds resistant to insects and chemical pesticides inevitably contributes to biodiversity loss.
The most widely used broad-spectrum herbicide is glyphosate, which the World Health Organisation has described as "probably carcinogenic to humans". Fungicides and insecticides are also routinely used in soy cultivation.
Eticonsum is a non-profit market research agency specialising in ESG (environment, social, governance) corporate performance applied to consumer insights.
We research and analyse the ethical market in the FMCG sector and evaluate the environmental and social performance of companies in order to help both conscious consumers to decide according to their values and companies to compete on ethical reputation.
With this metric, we aim to provide insight into and compare the actions and policies of the main retailers in Spain regarding the use of monocultures (palm oil, soy and cotton) in their own-brand products and their recognition of their environmental impact.
The expansion of palm oil crops, especially in Southeast Asia, has been associated with the deforestation of tropical forests, the appropriation of land belonging to indigenous communities, human rights abuses and the death of different animal species, such as elephants and orangutans.
The WHO (World Health Organisation) denounces that the palm oil industry is using similar tactics to the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research related to the health effects of palm oil. It is an industry that according to the WHO has ""little control"" and whose ""main concerns"" are around the effect of exposure to palm oil particles on foetal and infant mortality.
According to Greenpeace's "Hooked on Meat" report, approximately half of the soy produced globally is GM. The technology on which the different GM soya varieties are based is owned by a small handful of multinationals led by Bayer. Their main aim is to make the GM plants resistant to herbicide spraying. Of the GM soya grown in Brazil, 40% is genetically modified to be herbicide tolerant and 60% is genetically modified to be both glyphosate tolerant and insect resistant. Similarly, in Argentina, 83% of GM soybeans are tolerant to herbicides (again, mostly glyphosate) and 17% to insects.
The large-scale conversion of natural habitats to intensive soybean cultivation and the heavy reliance on GM seeds resistant to insects and chemical pesticides inevitably contributes to biodiversity loss.
The most widely used broad-spectrum herbicide is glyphosate, which the World Health Organisation has described as "probably carcinogenic to humans". Fungicides and insecticides are also routinely used in soy cultivation.
Formula
Answers are calculated as a weighted average. To find a weighted average of a group of numbers that have been normalized to the same 0-10 scale, you simply multiply each number by its weight (percentage) and add them up