Farmer-owned dairy co-op Arla found itself at the centre of an online storm last week over its trials of the Bovaer cow-feed supplement, designed to reduce methane emissions from cows.
The supplement, produced by Dutch nutrition company DSM-Firmenich, is being trialled at Arla farms to test its potential to reduce climate gases from livestock, as part of the co-op’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.
But the news prompted a social media storm, with claims made online that Bovaer contains chemicals harmful to cows and farmers. These chemicals can cause cancer, social media posters claimed, and get into milk. These claims are denied by the businesses involved, which say the chemicals in question are broken down in the cow’s stomach and pose no threat.
The pilot scheme has also been subject to online conspiracy theories, with social media posts falsely linking the additive to Bill Gates, and has drawn threats of a boycott to Arla products, including Lurpak, with social media users posting footage of themselves pouring milk and throwing butter away.
Bovaer has been approved by UK, EU and US food safety authorities, and is considered safe in the approved doses. Professor Alastair Hay, professor (emeritus) of environmental Ttxicology at the University of Leeds, said via the Science Media Centre that “extensive tests” had shown that at approved doses the additive “presents no cancer risk”.
He added: “There is no evidence to suggest that at the doses approved for use in animals that the additive is a risk to humans through consumption of milk.”
Responding to the controversy, Arla issued a statement, arguing that “a significant amount of misinformation has been circulating online, and we feel compelled to address this by clearly and openly stating the facts.”
It added: “Our commitment to reducing our climate impact is unwavering but we would never do so in a way that jeopardises the health of our consumers or the welfare of our animals.”
Arla reiterated that Bovaer does not filter through to humans when they consume dairy products.
“Regulatory bodies, such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the UK Food Standards Agency have approved its use based on evidence that it does not harm the animals or negatively impact their health, productivity, or the quality of milk,” it added, providing a link to a Food Standards Agency statement on the additive.
Arla added that Bovaer has undergone extensive safety testing and is specifically designed to break down in the cow’s digestive system, so that it does not pass into milk.
“Bovaer has been worked on for 15 years, and is being used in approximately 25 countries across more than 200,000 cows,” it said.
It was approved for UK use last December, and is currently approved in 68 countries, the dairy co-op added.
“Alongside the 2,000 farmers across the UK who own Arla, we work hard to produce healthy and quality food every day,” the co-op said. “We work to ensure that this is done safely, whilst also working to reduce our impact on the environment. ”
But Patrick Holden, founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, told the Telegraph that Arla had “resorted to feed additives to maintain positive PR for their dairy-farming industry”.
He noted that Bovaer has been declared safe but added: “Feeding cows potions to reduce emissions is a classic case of the dairy industry, and I use that word advisedly, treating the symptoms rather than the cause of the problem.
“The cause in this case is separating the dairy cow from her natural environment of which she is intrinsically a part.
“Once this separation has occurred, both physically and in the mindset of society, methane becomes a problem which needs to be addressed by re-engineering the cow.”
