## 4 Buttergate: What Happened? #Buttergate erupted into public view in early 2021. However, its origins date back a bit further. In 2020, baristas in British Columbia noted a problem with their milk not foaming consistently in lattes or expupcinos. The BC Milk Marketing Board issued a notice to producers identifying a few potential causes of non-foaming milk, one of which was poor quality feed and nutrition [44]. A year later, Professor [PERSON] posted a question to Twitter on 29 December 2021: \"Is it me or is #butter much harder now at room \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l} \hline \hline
**Rank** & **User** & **Username** & **Total Tweets** & **Followers** \\ \hline
1 & @FoodProfessor & The Food Professor & 98 & 14,208 \\
2 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 28 & 2583 \\
3 & @zecobealth & Narado Zeco Powell \(\mid\) & 27 & 7580 \\
4 & @AgWomen\_Canada & [PERSON]. & 24 & 741 \\
5 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 22 & 363 \\
6 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] DVM PhD & 21 & 1116 \\
7 & @realagriculture & RealAgriculture & 15 & 46,834 \\
8 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 15 & 4557 \\
9 & @jsjonker & Dairy Air & 14 & 478 \\
10 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 14 & 196 \\
11 & @AshtoniaCows & Dairy Done Daily & 13 & 2959 \\
12 & @cultureddairy & Cheese Goddess & 12 & 1921 \\
13 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 11 & 7739 \\
14 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 10 & 250 \\
15 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 9 & 175 \\
16 & @[PERSON] & [PERSON] & 9 & 1501 \\
17 & @GastroHistory & Gastronomic History & 9 & 5972 \\
18 & @GerenpeaceCA & Greenpeace Canada & 9 & 51,819 \\
19 & @Milkabot & CoViren-19 D’souzaTM & 9 & 5629 \\
20 & @climate\_lens & Climate Lens & 8 & 363 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Contributors to #buttergate by number of original posts. temperature?\" The tweet received a handful of comments agreeing but also many who disagreed or brought up other issues (e.g., butter is too soft, too watery, or secretly imported from the USA). On 23 January 2021, a Twitter user named [PERSON] asked, \"Has anyone else noticed there's something fishy going on with the water content in Lactantia unsalted butter?\" To which a prominent Canadian food writer (anon) responded, \"there's something going on with butter in general. I'm looking into it...\". The following day, the hashtag \"#buttergate\" was first used by a CBC Radio reporter named [PERSON] in response to [PERSON]'s tweet. All of this led to the Canadian food writer posting a modified version of [PERSON] question on 5 February 2021: \"Something is up with our butter supply, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. Have you noticed it's no longer soft at room temperature? Watery? Rubbery?\" This time, the tweet received significant attention with 376 individual comments in response. Suspicions about the role of palm fats were seeded in some of the comments on the Canadian food writer's post. Ten days later, Prof. [PERSON] published an op-ed in the newspaper _Le Journal de Montreal_[45]. In the op-ed, [PERSON] claimed that, since the summer of 2020, farmers had been giving increased palm fat supplements to their cattle which may be the underlying cause of butter quality issues. The article cited the unpublished 2020 research into non-foaming milk as evidence that the industry knew it had a palm fat problem. Two more op-eds followed in short order, both making similar claims. The Canadian food writer's op-ed ran in _The Globe and Mail_ on 20 February and was immediately followed by Prof. [PERSON] second op-ed in the same paper on 21 February, which again pointed to palm fats as the underlying problem. Thus, the locus of protest began to shift towards a particular bioproduct in the dairy industry's supply chain: palm fats. From there, #buttergate started to gain national and international media attention. The BBC ran an article on 23 February that stated, \"Since the summer, hundreds of farmers around the country have stepped up their use of palm oil substances in an attempt to boost supply\" [46]. However, the article provided no evidence to substantiate this claim.