Hello All,

We have had some answers back from Kellogg's about the progress they have made in the last year, see below:

1. Why do the US and Latin Am not use certified segregated oil at all?
   At this time, the infrastructure within these two regions means there is not a consistent supply of segregated palm oil available to meet our needs. Our commitment is to use physically certified palm oil by 2025 which includes mass balance and not just segregated material.
2. It seems a long time to phase out Green Palm certificates i.e. another 5 years since the policy was announced - this does not seem very ambitious?
   We are already well on our way to meeting our commitment with 85% of our palm material coming from certified physical sources. Eliminating the last 15% is the hardest part as the plants receiving material need to go through an RSPO audit. This is a big job for many of our plants to complete so we wanted to make sure that we had time for them to adequately complete this exercise. But rest assured, we are actively working on this.  We also vetted this timeline with NGOs such as RAN, when we made the commitment and communicated that this would be a two prong activity that is supported by our on the ground Impact Incubator work we are doing with Wild Asia to increase opportunities for smallholder farmers to be RSPO Certified.
3. How are Kellogg's pushing to ensure deforestation for palm oil is stopped?
   This year we are participating in, and asking our suppliers to report on, the Implementation Reporting Framework (IRF). This will help us better assess the level of due diligence of our T1 suppliers and their extended supply chains in the area of deforestation. We will be reporting our own IRF profile in June through our Palm Oil Milestones. This helps us target underperforming mills and informs our conversations with direct suppliers.
4. On the Grievance Tracker there do not seem to be many concrete actions taken, it is just monitoring/taking the supplier's word for what is happening eg GAR March 2020 (a stronger response would be expected)? We are reporting on identified grievances and following our grievance mechanism plan of action for those that come through. We follow any RSPO developments and will incorporate appropriate actions as more information on some of these issues becomes available. What I can share is that we did suspend two suppliers last year for failing to meet their deforestation and human rights commitments. These were two upstream suppliers and we communicated to our T1 suppliers that these two actors should be fully removed from our supply chain.
5. A number of complaints have no status or action against them so how are they being resolved? Most of the grievances that we have reported are ongoing and we are following current developments and will update as needed or action is taken in against a specific supplier.

It is good to have answers but it does not seem ambitious enough considering the scale of the problem. How many more acres of rainforest will be lost in the mean time? How many more orangutans and fellow rainforest creatures will lose their habitat and lives?  The climate crisis demands ambitious actions to mitigate the problems we are facing.

Please let us know your thoughts and if you know of any companies that are leading the way in this area.

Hope you are keeping well and happy.

Asha, Jia & Harvinder