Arla Foods has announced a new project with Morrisons, Tesco and Aldi to trial the use of Bovaer, a supplement which claims to reduce enteric methane emissions from cows on average, by 27 per cent.
As part of its FarmAhead Customer Partnership initiative, Arla will work alongside retail partners Morrisons and Aldi, and with Tesco, on its new Future Dairy Partnership initiative, to highlight how feed additives can be introduced to normal feeding routines.
The new project, which will also involve around 30 of Arla’s farmer owners, aims to provide a better understanding of how these feed additives can be rolled out across a larger group of farmers.
Public backlash
But an explosive social media response, including over 13,000 comments on X, indicated that the public may be far from ready for the Arla/Bovaer approach to carbon reductions. Public concerns ranged from health impacts to environmental sustainability.
Leilani Dowding wrote on X, “You are […] insane if you think adding toxic chemicals to cows food that could cause harm to the farmers and the cows will help alter the climate of the planet I will be avoiding ALL of your products.”
Another X user wrote, “I’ve used Lurpak [a well-known Arla brand] for years. I’m not prepared to further them anymore if they are adding this chemical to milk which they use to make their product it’s completely wrong on all levels in my view forcing this on us.”
Another wrote, “Thanks for letting us know, I’ll be keeping well away from these products.”
Rigorous assessment
Bovaer was authorised for use in the UK earlier this year and has also been approved for use in the EU, Australia and Canada. The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) said that all authorised feed additives, including Bovaer, have undergone rigorous safety assessments.
The FSA said that testing had found “no causes for concern”. The Joint Expert Group on Animal Feed and Feed Additives concluded that the additive could be considered safe for cattle, sheep and goats within guideline doses, however it should be handled carefully by farm workers as it is “corrosive to the eyes, a skin irritant and potentially harmful by inhalation”, They concluded that “the additive poses an acceptable risk to the environment.”
But X user and farmer, Doug Wanstall, summed up the mood when he wrote, “NO NO NO NO NO NO. Your attention should be focused on milk from forage, complex multi species mob grazing, adding trees in agroforestry systems and all other nature based systems to remove biogenic methane emissions. Nature has the solutions it just needs a helping hand.”
Another X user wrote, “Happy to consume dairy products from smaller, independent farms who are not party to these mad practices.”
Another wrote, “Thankfully, I buy my beef from a local farmer who doesn’t get involved in any of this tomfoolery.”
X users also voiced concerns about presumed links to billionaire Bill Gates. Gates has invested in a rival methane-reducing start-up technology, Rumin 8, but has not invested Bovaer. Other X users denied the existence of global warming.
Over-emphasis on carbon emissions
While Bovaer may help to suppress methane, many agroecological farmers consider feed additives a prop to support overly-industrialised systems rather than a tool to enable a regenerative transition.
Innovative dairy farmer, Mark Anderson, from Westridge Farm in New Zealand, said, “Consumer and farmer push back will continue as industry pushes symptom treating rather than addressing root causes. Vast amounts of money invested (wasted) to date to add bandaids and enable the continuation of the status quo.”
A focus on methane-reducing feed additives may imply an over-emphasis on reducing carbon emissions, rather than improving carbon cycling, and a lack of commitment to delivering the positive impacts that ruminants can achieve in holistically managed systems.
Ruminants on well-managed pasture-based farms can deliver excellent carbon cycling, as well as biodiversity restoration and climate adaptation.
Cattle are particularly helpful in restoring and maintaining the health of the soil carbon sponge, which is essential for water cycling to reduce flooding and to maintain food production in long dry periods.
Mishandled public messaging
Professor John Gilliland said on LinkedIn that he was concerned that the Danish multi-national was mishandling the public messaging, and that the fall out could hit more nature-based solutions as well.
He said, “22 years ago I was one of 16 people appointed by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on to a special UK commission, called the Agriculture Environment Biotechnology Commission to assess the public opinion of growing genetic modified crops in the UK.”
At that time, Gilliland said, the public was against GM technology and so the UK & EU chose not to allow the commercialisation of GM crops technology.
He said, “After the three years of public engagement by the Commission, one thing was very clear… the main biotechnology company promoting genetically modified crops, Monsanto, made one huge error… it believed that their customer were farmers and the food chain; and totally ignored the fact that the ultimate customer is actually our urban majority consumers and their perceptions.” He explained that, “Monsanto made no effort to engage and inform [the public] of what the societal benefits of their technology were.”
“One of the [Commission] recommendations was a call for biotechnology companies to engage with wider society as soon as possible.” Gilliland said that companies have a responsibility to explain the supposed societal benefits of their technologies, rather than just leaving it to farmers to pick up the pieces when they fail to do so.
Gilliland said that he felt history was repeating itself. Without public education and engagement, “Arla, and food chain companies like Arla, will be completely exposed to this public backlash and yet again the UK and Europe will become a cold host to the essential products of our innovation industry, not just in synthetic solutions, but in nature base solutions too.”
“In the meantime,” he concluded, “livestock farmers will continue to be the butt of such negative press, even when we can show we deliver so many different public goods.”
Scaling emissions reduction
Paul Dover, UK Agricultural Director at Arla Foods, said, “We know that reducing methane is a big opportunity when it comes to improving our carbon footprint at farm level and feed additives like Bovaer have huge potential in helping us tackle this issue. Bringing partners together from across the food & grocery industry in this kind of initiative highlights the support there is for British farmers in transitioning to more sustainable farming methods.”
Arla said that its Bovaer trial will provide a more practical understanding of how to scale the use of feed additives, how it impacts on-farm operations and the opportunity to work more collaboratively with the feed industry.
In a joint comment, Morrisons, Aldi and Tesco said, “Through collaboration as part of Arla’s FarmAhead Customer Partnership, we have the ability to address some of the climate challenges facing our food system. It is this collective approach that is really going to make a difference. Being involved in using a feed additive is a great way of testing out where we can drive change at scale to bring down emissions.”
This article was updated at 09.14 on Monday 2nd December.