Palm oil: an alternative to the rainforest – will palm oil come out of the bioreactor soon?

In no way did Fadillah Yusof simply want to accept what he heard from faraway Europe at the end of December. According to Yousof, “baseless accusations” are what the EU is accusing his country of. Yusof, Malaysia’s minister of raw materials, is concerned about a new trade law that was passed in Brussels in December. The decree, which still has to be formally approved by the European Parliament, will ban European companies from importing goods made from rainforests from 2024 onwards. This also applies to palm oil, an important export product from Malaysia. In Brussels, unless importers prove otherwise, it will soon be considered harmful to the environment. And Yusof has threatened: “We can simply stop exports to Europe.”