Japan Accepts ISPO In 2021 Olympic Food Supply Chain

Tokyo – The organizing committee of Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020 has accepted the certificate of Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) as one of 19 sustainability certificates that meet the sustainable sourcing code on supply chains of food stuffs, energy sources and other goods and services needed during the Games.

“With the support of all related parties, our struggle for this sustainability recognition has finally paid off. The Tokyo 2020 recognized our ISPO certificate as one of the 19 certificates that meet the sustainable sourcing code on the supply chains of goods and services, including palm oil, during the Olympic Games,” Sri Nuryanti, the attaché of agriculture at the Indonesian embassy in Tokyo, said recently.

With the recognition from the organizing committee, Indonesia will become one of the supplying countries that will supply food and beverage products required during the Games, which have been postponed for a year from the initial schedule on 24 July to 9 August 2020 to 23 July – 8 August 2021 due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.

She said that the struggle to get the recognition is not easy as Japan applies a very high standard of sustainability for the procurements of all products and services required during the Games 2021. She said that the organizing committee’s recognition is the result of the embassy’s persistent diplomatic and lobbying efforts with the support of other related parties.

“We’ve been conducting a series of meetings since early in 2019. We met the operation sustainability director of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in order to convince them about the sustainability of Indonesia’s agricultural products already on sale in Japan,” Sri said in a written statement received by InfoSAWIT recently.

“We give them all necessary documents from the ISPO Commission Secretariat to convince the organizing committee of The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020 that Indonesian palm oil has fulfilled the principles of sustainability.

We also provide them with copies of the agriculture ministry regulation (Permentan) No.11/2015 on the system of Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Certification in English, details of names, certification units, locations, companies, plantation areas, crude palm oil (CPO) production, the institution of certification, the 457 oil palm plantation companies that have got the ISPO certificates; and 25 sample sheets of ISPO certificates that had been accepted by the plantation companies. After reviewing, the organizing committee has finally decided to recognize the ISPO certificate as a standard of food sustainability during the Games,” Sri said.

Sri pointed out that the sustainable sourcing code is concerned with the procurements of raw materials of wood products, paper, livestock products, fishery products, and other agricultural products which include palm oil and soybean required during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Despite of the fact that the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020 was postponed for a year from the initial schedule on 24 July to 9 August 2020 to 23 July – 8 August 2021 due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, Sri said that she is optimistic the achievement has renewed their spirit to continue diplomatic endeavors and created a path of hope that such achievement can also be realized in other countries.

“When Japan can accept the sustainability of a product from Indonesia, half of the world’s countries will do the same as the standard set by Japan is very high,” she added.

Source: Infosawit/JPNN
Featured image via rainforest-alliance.org