Buttergate

Buttergatewas 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 inpalm oilin dairy cattle diet, prompting theDairy Farmers of Canadato recommend to farmers to cease adding palm oil to cow's diets.
Butter consistency is influenced by both the balance of ingredients added tomilk fat, and the diet of the dairy cattle that produce the milk fat.
The primary ingredient inbutteris milk fat, although butter also contains saturated fats includinglardandtallowwhich are solid at room temperature andmono- andpolyunsaturatedfats includingolive oilandcanola oilwhich are liquid at room temperature.Butter hardness is a result of the percentage mix of those ingredients.While European butter rules mandate fat content typically in the 82% to 85% range, Canadian regulations require 80% of butter to be milk fat.
Canadian recipe writerJulie Van Rosendaalsubsequently 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.Palm oil containspalmitic acid, has a melting point of 63 °C (145 °F), and increases the hardness of butter.
Francis Halin from theLe Journal de Montrealreported on butter softness in February 2021,the same monthTwitterusers replied to a tweet by Van Rosendaal in which she asked about other people's experience of butter not softening at room temperature.Within a week of Rosendaal’s follow-up article in the CBC,  the surrounding scandal was labelled Buttergate.
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.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.
TheDairy Farmers of Canadainitially rejected Van Rosendaal's assertions, before switching tactics to whatThe Economistcalled "grovelling,"making two statements in February 2021:
Recent studies published in academic journals suggest that a strong correlation betweenpalmitic acidand butter firmness existed, disputing the Dairy Farmers of Canada's claim that nothing was wrong.
Sylvain Charlebois, of the Agri-food Analytics Lab atDalhousie Universitynoted that consumers initially blamed colder weather but opined that the most likely cause was an increase of palm oil in cow diet.
In response to Buttergate,Dairy Farmers of Canadaand The Quebec Milk Producers Association recommended that dairy farmers stop feeding palm oil to dairy cattle.Quebec-based dairy cooperativeAgropur, welcomed The Quebec Milk Producers Association's advice.David Christensen, professor emeritus of animal science at theUniversity 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.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada created working group on the use of palm oil produced its final report in January 2022.The working group concluded that butter hardening could not be "solely attributed" to palm oil supplementation.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.