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Buttergate was a 2021 event in which Canadian butter became more difficult to spread due to increased hardness. Canadian consumers expressed disappointment that butter stopped becoming soft at room temperature. Food experts attributed the hardness to an increased use in palm oil in dairy cattle diet, prompting the Dairy Farmers of Canada to recommend to farmers to cease adding palm oil to cow's diets.

Butter manufacturing

Butter consistency is influenced by both the balance of ingredients added to milk fat, and the diet of the dairy cattle that produce the milk fat.^[1]

Butter ingredients

The primary ingredient in butter is milk fat, although butter also contains saturated fats including lard and tallow which are solid at room temperature and mono- and polyunsaturated fats including olive oil and canola oil which are liquid at room temperature.^[1] Butter hardness is a result of the percentage mix of those ingredients.^[1] While European butter rules mandate fat content typically in the 82% to 85% range, Canadian regulations require 80% of butter to be milk fat.^[1]

Milk-fat production

Canadian recipe writer Julie Van Rosendaal subsequently suggested that dairy farmers may have increased their use of palm oil in dairy cattle's diet, increasing the hardness of the milk fat they produced.^[1] Palm oil contains palmitic acid, has a melting point of 63 °C (145 °F), and increases the hardness of butter.^[1]

Timeline

Francis Halin from the Le Journal de Montreal reported on butter softness in February 2021,^[2] the same month Twitter users replied to a tweet by Van Rosendaal in which she asked about other people's experience of butter not softening at room temperature.^[1]^[3] Within a week of Rosendaal’s follow-up article in the CBC, the surrounding scandal was labelled Buttergate.^[3]^[4]

Causes

Van Rosendaal blamed the hardening on both an increase in home baking during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and an increased use of palm oil.^[5] Retail butter sales increased 12.4% in 2020, while the number of dairy cows in Canada decreased, with a cull occurring when milk production reduced in response to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic; schools had previously bought milk for student consumption.^[1]^[5]

The Dairy Farmers of Canada initially rejected Van Rosendaal's assertions, before switching tactics to what The Economist called "grovelling,"^[6] making two statements in February 2021:

"There are many different factors that can have subtle impacts on the taste, texture and the melting point of butter, including differences in a cow’s diet from one region to another or from one season to the next"
"Exact cow feed rations are determined at the farm level in consultation with animal nutrition experts and may impact the complexity of butter in various ways.”^[1]

Recent studies published in academic journals suggest that a strong correlation between palmitic acid and butter firmness existed, disputing the Dairy Farmers of Canada's claim that nothing was wrong.^[7]^[8]

Sylvain Charlebois, of the Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University noted that consumers initially blamed colder weather but opined that the most likely cause was an increase of palm oil in cow diet.^[9]^[5]^[10]

Impact

In response to Buttergate, Dairy Farmers of Canada and The Quebec Milk Producers Association recommended that dairy farmers stop feeding palm oil to dairy cattle.^[3] Quebec-based dairy cooperative Agropur, welcomed The Quebec Milk Producers Association's advice.^[3] David Christensen, professor emeritus of animal science at the University of Saskatchewan, stated that the directives to not use palm oil will present production challenges for dairy farmers, as there was no equally effective alternative as palm oil for boosting fatty milk production.^[3]

The Dairy Farmers of Canada created working group on the use of palm oil produced its final report in January 2022.^[11] The working group concluded that butter hardening could not be "solely attributed" to palm oil supplementation.^[11] An academic also correlated palmitic acid content in butter with hardness, critiqued the lack of transparency in the Canadian dairy supply, which it linked to an inability to make firm conclusions linking agricultural practises with consumer products.^[7]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ van Rosendaal, Julie Van (20 February 2021). "Buttergate: Butter not as soft as it used to be? The pandemic and our urge to bake is partly to blame – along with palm oil". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
^ Halin, Francis (15 February 2021). "De l'huile de palme des tropiques pour nourrir les vaches du Québec". Le Journal de Montréal. Archived from the original on 2022-11-18. Retrieved 2022-11-19.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Fieber, Palmela (2 March 2021). "'Buttergate' goes viral, putting palm oil fat supplements in spotlight". CBC. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
^ "I can't believe it's not melting! 'Buttergate' worries Canadians". The Daily Telegraph. London. 25 Feb 2021. p. 15. ProQuest 2492836754.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Buttergate: Why are Canadians complaining about hard butter?". BBC News. 23 February 2021. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
^ "Canadians are in a flutter about butter". The Economist. 27 May 2021. Archived from the original on 4 September 2022. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
^ ^a ^b Music, Janet; Charlebois, Sylvain; Marangoni, Alejandro G.; Ghazani, Saeed M.; Burgess, Jesse; Proulx, Amy; Somogyi, Simon; Patelli, Yannick (1 May 2022). "Data deficits and transparency: What led to Canada's 'buttergate'". Trends in Food Science & Technology. 123: 334–342. doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2022.02.005. S2CID 246784393.
^ Marangoni, Alejandro G.; Ghazani, Saeed M.; Gammage, Sarah; Van Rosendaal, Julie; Music, Janet; Charlebois, Sylvain (30 May 2022). "Higher palmitic acid and dipalmitoyloleate levels are correlated to increased firmness in commercial butter". Food Chemistry. 377: 131991. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.131991. PMID 34995963. S2CID 245631321.
^ Charlebois, Dr Sylvain (2021-02-23). "Opinion: Buttergate and the 'hard' truth about Canadian butter". Montreal. Archived from the original on 2022-08-23. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
^ Kestler-D'Amours, Jillian (4 March 2021). "'Buttergate': Why isn't butter softening in Canada?". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
^ ^a ^b Blair, Jennifer (13 April 2022). "There's a lesson in 'buttergate' for all farmers, says food writer". Alberta Farmer Express. Archived from the original on 23 August 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.