MUST WATCH. The moving, animated Christmas TV commercial about Rang-Tan the orangutan banned from British television for being 'too political'.

Britain's advertising clearing body has banned a supermarket group's Christmas TV commercial and its moving message, with the must-watch environmental ad about Rang-tan the orangutan showing the devastation caused by palm oil producers, that has now gone viral.

The Iceland supermarket chain wanted to broadcast a TV commercial that is an edited version of a Greenpeace-made animated video, highlighting the scourge of palm oil growers destroying rain forest habitats causing orangutans to become a critically endangered species.

Iceland's TV commercial has been banned because, Clearcast that approves TV commercials for TV channels in the United Kingdom says the ad is "too political". Meanwhile the UK's Advertising Standards Authority that has oversight over and the authority to rule over ClearCast's decision is washing its hands over the decision.

Iceland has decided to upload the video to YouTube instead.

The Icelands supermarket group worked with Greenpeace to re-edit its animation short film and to broadcast it as a TV commercial, after it earlier this year decided to remove all palm oil from its own supermarket-branded foods.

Iceland in a statement says "This was a film that Greenpeace made with a voice-over by Emma Thompson. We got permission to use it and take off the Greenpeace logo and use it as the Iceland Christmas ad. We have said repeatedly we are not anti-palm oil, we are anti-deforestation. We think this is a huge story that needs to be told".

A Clearcast spokesperson told The Guardian that "Clearcast and the broadcasters have to date been unable to clear this Iceland ad because we are concerned that it doesn't comply with the political rules of the Broadcast Code of Advertising Practice code".

The latest Greenpeace research found that 25 palm oil groups had cleared more than 130 000 hectares of rainforest in the last 3 years while companies including Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Mondelez, Mars and Kellogg's buy palm oil from companies that Greenpeace deems to be destructive.