Response by Walter Rau Lebensmittel
Unofficial Translation by the Resource Centre, the German original is available here.
Thank you for your enquiry and the opportunity to return a comment. We take your accusation very seriously and would like to take this opportunity to refer you to our publicly accessible tracker for such matters. Under Palm (bunge.com) it shows the following as the latest information on the palm oil producer NaturAceites:
Feb-24 (2): Naturaceites shared a new statement to respond to the allegations made by The European Center of Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Foodwatch. According to their statement they shared that the allegations refer to previous statement mentioned in a blog by the Romero Initiative (CIR) which has been already addressed through their Compliance and Grievance Mechanism in June 2023. They reinforced that currently, there are no legal processes related to human rights violations, land tenure issues, labor rights or environmental pollution against Naturaceites. More information in the statement attached (Response to Quote from ECCHR and Foodwatch). Naturaceites also shared on their website the results of an Investigation Protocol conducted by IBD in 2023 that concludes (from Portuguese): "Naturaceites' area of influence is surrounded by conflicts. However, the company strives to maintain a good relationship with the communities and their representatives. It is important to note that some situations are not under the responsibility of the auditor to assess, nor contained in the guidelines of the RSPO 2018 P&C standard, and are therefore legal issues in Guatemala".