Source: BusinessGreen

But fast food giant denies it is a customer of controversial supplier Asia Pulp and Paper

KFC has become the latest company to come under fire from Greenpeace for its environmentally damaging activities, after the fast food giant was accused of selling its chicken in buckets produced by a controversial paper supplier.

However, KFC denied the allegations, maintaining it was not a customer of the targeted supplier.

Greenpeace yesterday launched a new report as part of its on-going campaign against Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), accusing it of sourcing timber from rainforest clearance in Indonesia, home to a dwindling number of Sumatran tigers.

Earlier this month, APP made a series of new commitments to protect forests including suspending natural forest clearance on its pulpwood plantations in Indonesia from June.

However, Greenpeace warned the pledge allows APP to continue to clear rainforests until at least 2015, and it now claims to have found traces of APP products in KFC packaging.

The report named KFC and its parent company Yum! as customers of APP, saying Greenpeace had found traces of APP’s rainforest-sourced paper in packaging in China, the UK, and Indonesia.

It urged Yum!, which also owns Pizza Hut, to terminate its contract with the paper conglomerate, following the likes of Danone, Xerox, and the Collins publishing group, which last month pledged to boycott APP over concerns of illegal logging.

“KFC and Yum! have done the least of any of the top fast food companies to rid their supply chain of rainforest destruction, ignoring the evidence and dragging their feet for years as we and others have tried to get them to change their sourcing,” the report said.

“If endangered animals like the Sumatran tiger are to survive in the wild, companies like KFC cannot continue to turn a blind eye to rainforest destruction.”

But KFC spokesmen in the US and UK told BusinessGreen that it was not a customer of APP. The US office said it sourced nearly 80 per cent of its paper products from sustainable sources, while the UK and Ireland office said 100 per cent of its packaging was either recycled or from sustainable sources.

“KFC is committed to the environment and nearly 80 per cent of our paper and paperboard products are from sustainable sources. Neither KFC US nor our suppliers source from the company that is the target of the protest,” the US spokesman told BusinessGreen.

APP has consistently denied it contributes to deforestation. A spokeswoman said the company’s Mixed Tropical Hardwood (MTH), which Greenpeace has targeted in the campaign, does not come from the felling of virgin tropical rainforest trees in Indonesia.

“APP has strict policies and practices in place to ensure that only residues from legal plantation development on degraded or logged – over forest areas and sustainable wood fibre enters the production supply chain,” she said.