For months now, thousands of Canadians have taken to social media, saying they’ve noticed that butter sold in Canada is harder and does not get softer at room temperature. Not all butter is harder, but most is. Some people blame winter and the colder weather, but the truth is more troubling than that. Disturbing reports are now pointing at some practices on the farm that may have altered the quality of the butter we buy.
Since last summer, thousands of dairy farmers have been giving more energy supplements to their herd - palm oil given to cows. Sources suggest it has been going on for more than a decade, but the problem has become more apparent since August, when butter demand went up suddenly, forcing the dairy industry to produce more dairy fat.
To explain it simply, palm oil given to dairy cows increases the proportion of saturated fat in milk compared to unsaturated fat, thus increasing the melting point of butter. This explains why butter made from cows fed with palm oil remains difficult to spread at room temperature.
Demand and pressure rising
Due to our supply management regime, farmers are under tremendous pressure to meet their quotas so they can get paid. What is also making the use of palm oil on supply-managed farms the most probable cause is that many specialty products, like organic butter and butter made from grass fed cows, don’t appear to have been affected at all. The use of palm oil in dairy has been going on for at least a decade without consumers knowing about it, but since last summer, the practice suddenly expanded to hundreds of farms, if not thousands.
Demand for butter in 2020 was up 12.4 per cent in Canada. Having more Canadians at home cooking up a storm has added more stress on dairy production, and more specifically, on the production of butter fat. Hard butter is now more noticeable because so many farms are participating in the practice. It is believed about 30-35 per cent of Canadian dairy farmers are doing this to meet their lucrative production quotas, but nobody knows for sure, not even the Dairy Farmers of Canada or the Canadian Dairy Commission. In fact, the Dairy Farmers of Canada are still turning a blind eye and denying everything even though suppliers, farmers, and processors have now come forward admitting the problem.
What's the problem with palm oil?
Canadians may wonder why a dairy farmer would ever use palm oil to increase fat production. Even though palmitic acids come at a cost, it is less expensive than adding cows to their herds, which would substantially increase the cost of production. There is nothing illegal about giving palm oil to dairy cows, and nothing prevents dairy farmers from doing this.
However, little research has been conducted on how giving palmitic acids to dairy cows could compromise the health of both animals and humans. What we do know is that palm oil may increase certain heart disease risk factors in some people. The effects of palm oil production on the environment, health and lives of indigenous people in different parts of the world are well documented and deeply concerning. So, given the Blue Cow campaign by dairy farmers, which is constantly reminding us that dairy products in Canada are amongst the best in the world, such practice is ethically questionable.
Complaints have been filed with processors, which then get filed with the dairy boards. The number of complaints is making this situation tricky and dairy boards have been unbelievably quiet on the hard butter issue on social media and elsewhere.
This subject is obviously taboo in the industry, and many dairy farmers with a high sense of integrity are seemingly upset and want this practice to cease immediately. Nobody in the industry wants to openly address the issue, at least not within media.
The presence of palm oil in dairy fat can be detected but does require time and effort. Some firms are apparently trying to develop a technology that will allow dairy manufacturers to detect palmitic acids in the product they receive. Sources are suggesting that dairy boards want to use this technology to discipline farmers, allowing manufacturers to reject sub-par butter fat in the interest of the industry and the public.
The dairy industry is quite concerned about its angelic image and does not want this story to come out in the open, but now it has.
The public's milk
Unlike other countries, in Canada milk is essentially a public good. Not only do dairy farmers have exclusive government-sanctioned quotas, which make it a privilege for the few to produce milk, but Canadians taxpayers have also given $1.75-billion to the industry to assure us continued access to wholesome dairy products.
Dairy Farmers of Canada has only itself to blame. Despite its dismal transparency track record, it should have asked Ottawa to ban these products from the market, or at least openly condemned the practice. A step in the right direction would be to see supply-managed dairy farmers including Canadian grown oils in their feed additives over imported palm oil. However, they chose not to, simply to uphold the image they desperately try to protect, at any cost.
So disappointing.
