It started with one innocent question on Twitter: did butter become more difficult to spread in Canada?
My butter just seemed more difficult. It was during a very hot period and I noticed it wasn’t behaving well, ”said Sylvain Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University who posted the tweet. “But I thought I was the only one experiencing this.”
He quickly discovered that he was not alone.
Julie Van Rosendaal, a cookbook author, was one of many others who posted to describe a mysterious transformation in the pantry. “Something is wrong with our butter supply,” she wrote
The growing suspicion that palm oil extracts could be the culprit has sparked a nationwide outrage, and as questions grow, the affair has revived long-standing grievances about the country’s powerful dairy industry – and allegations that the policy is saddling Canadians with higher costs to protect farmers.
“Butter is probably two or three times more expensive in Canada than in the United States. And as Canadians, we’ve implicitly agreed to this, ”Charlebois. “But we also expect quality. So regardless of what’s causing harder butter, people are really wondering what’s going on here. And they doubt the dairy industry’s lack of transparency. “
For years, Canada has strictly controlled milk, butter and cheese production through inventory management – a complex system of production controls and tariffs designed to discourage foreign imports and keep domestic prices stable.
Under the system, farmers receive the same amount for their product every month.
During trade talks with the US, Donald Trump fought against the system and unsuccessfully called on Canada to dismantle its long-standing protectionist measures.
Charlebois believes the system is largely responsible for the current squabble over butter quality.
“No matter the quality of your product, no matter what happens on your farm, you get the same amount. As a result, farmers in Canada are probably the best cost controllers in the world when it comes to dairy, ”said Charlebois. “How do you actually make more fat while keeping costs as low as possible? Palmitic acids are a very convenient solution. “
Palm oil extracts have long been used in the dairy industry to increase milk production and the fat content of the milk. Charlebois and other experts suspect that rising demand for butter – exacerbated by the pandemic – has led more producers to adopt the practice.
There is still no clear explanation as to why Canadians are noticing a change in their butter, but Charlebois refers to an October report from the British Columbia Dairy Marketing Council expressing concern about a lack of milk froth – saying the problem had “ escalated before ” . considerably since the end of August ”- and called on producers to be vigilant. The observations made by the council, he said, were consistent with the presence of palm oil extracts.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada initially dismissed concerns about a change in butter quality.
But as concerns grew and Le Journal de Montréal published allegations that more farmers admitted using palm extracts to feed their herds, the lobby group issued a follow-up statement saying that palm products are sometimes added to dairy cows’ rations, but the practice has ” a very limited impact on the palmitic fatty acid profile of their milk “.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada said adding palm extracts to cow feed was common in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.
On Wednesday, however, La Presse reported that the Quebec dairy industry council had called for an immediate end to the use of palm oil in cow feed.
In addition to questions about the long-term health effects of palm oil and its devastating impact on the environment, Charlebois said the opaque response is just as troubling.
“Milk and butterfat must be considered public goods because of our government quota system. There is a moral contract between the dairy industry and consumers, ”he said.
With Canadian taxpayers set to pay the industry $ 1.75 billion in subsidies over the next three years, largely in compensation for increased global access to domestic markets, Charlebois said questions about the quality of butter meant that the moral contract had been violated.
Previous debates about the country’s stockpiling have often been riddled with mysterious policy issues, but Charlebois said things seemed different this time.
‘People understand that butter shouldn’t destroy toast in the morning. And they also know that palm oil is bad. People understand those things. And that’s why I think people are a little shocked by what they’re hearing now. “