Dairy Cow Feed Additive Trials - statement from Soil Association

[Verbena17]

In case anybody is wondering about how safe the Uk milk chain is, following the past few days news about the Bovaer dairy feed trials and Arla milk/products, the Soil Association has made this statement…

‘This week, Arla Foods UK announced a trial on 30 farms for the use of Bovaer®, a feed additive aimed at reducing methane emissions from cows. news.arlafoods.co.uk/news/major-ret…

This has led us to receive a large number of questions about whether this feed additive would be permitted in organic. It would not.

Soil Association organic standards stipulate that all ingredients/components of a feed additive must be actively approved for use and be deemed safe and nutritionally useful for the animal. The main components that make up Bovaer® are not included in the list of approved products/compounds and as a result, Bovaer® would not be permitted under organic standards and for use in organic farming.

Arla buys milk from many different farms and they supply both organic and non-organic milk. Any organic milk they supply must meet organic regulation requirements and the production has to be completely separate from any non-organic milk. This must be demonstrated and independently audited every year.’

Thank you for this thread OP.

Silicone dioxide and propylene glycol are already widely used in food.
And why are people particularly worried about the 3-nitrooxypropanol when dairy cows might be given other drugs and/or eat grass or feed with pesticides on them?
If you want something to actually worry about, read up
On antibiotic resistance caused by overuse in farm animals

DH’s family farm went out of Dairy some years ago as Arla dropped them and no other company would pick up the milk due to the remoteness.
I’ve been asking DH a lot about this and he said that seaweed supplements, amongst others, have been being fed to cattle for years, so most of the population have been consuming it unknown. He thinks this supplement is already widely used in mainland Europe; he remembers learning about it on a university trip to Denmark.
It’s only this one’s claim to reduce methane that’s made it a public interest.
The farm is organic so wouldn’t be eligible for the trial even if it was still in dairy; but DH says each batch of trial milk would be traceable from farm collection to processing.

I think it’s because it’s all been done in a pretty covert/non labelling way.
We all know and consent (or not) to buying non organic milk/cheese/yoghurt etc, and understand that most farm animals are vaxxed or wormed/given antibiotics etc.

Bovaer however in the trials showed the side effects, such as tumours & fertility issues that maybe consumers would like to decide about & give their consent to.

Have you actually seen that data? Because I can virtually guarantee that it will have been observed in rats dosed at many hundreds of times higher than the likely exposure through milk

Thanks for this. Yes I’ve read about the use of seaweed, which is fab.
Labelling should be pretty easy - i don’t quite get why supermarkets can’t label trial products….well, other than nobody would probably buy them 😉

https://www.food.gov.uk/research/novel-and-non-traditional-foods-additives-and-processes/outcome-of-assessment-of-3-nitrooxypropanol-3-nop-as-a-feed-additive-for-all-ruminants-for-milk-production-and-reproduction?print=1

Yep, toxicity studies in rats, rabbits and dogs using enormous doses

The part that annoys me the most is that even if I buy organic dairy to feed myself, my kids, my family and friends . . . . the school won't, cafe's won't, restaurants won't, caterers of any kind won't bother. So with this stuff permeating in milk, and then in every product - it's going to be impossible to avoid unless we never eat out / buy a hot chocolate / pudding / ice cream from an ice cream van / summer fete / charity event etc etc etc.

grrrrrrrrrrrr

But that doesn’t make it ok to quietly add it into the food chain. Exposure over a longer period of time may well show up side effects.

Plenty of cases in the last 100 years of apparently safe products proving to be deadly and subject to mega cover ups.

Cows in fields by roads eat grass covered in diesel particulates and rubber and road dust. Cows drink out of rivers and streams contaminated with god knows what. If you're worried about a feed additive, why aren't you worried about that.

Who says I’m not

Doesn't make it ok to deliberately add something with potentially unknown longterm effects, how many times do we need to go through that before we learn?

Considering this was only trialed for 90 days it’s appalling.

Ive avoided all Arla products in this weeks shop and I’ll be asking where the milk comes from if I go for a coffee.

I could be literally messing with my children’s fertility so I’ll be avoiding it. It could also cause tumours. Good to see on X though all the dairy farmers who are NOT using it, so I’ll be putting in an order with our local one.

It’s interesting though that the makers of this additive also have shared in Bill Gates fake meat company. We really don’t know the long term risks to the carries health, the meat, the dairy, the soil that the cattle stand on, long term effects on humans as it was only a 90 day trial. If you need PPE to handle it - I can’t see it being a good thing

I don̈t blame farmers. I blame pressure on them from the supermarkets for years & years.

I live on a dairy farm, but it's not Arla. I'll have a chat with our farmer about it all. It sounds very worrying. Thanks for the post, OP.

Sorry I thought this was a thread about this new and specific issue in food production, not an exhaustive list of issues with food production. I suggest you start a new thread if you're worried about all of those things.

While we're at it, want to talk about Dupont and PTFEs/PFAS in cooking equipment on a new thread? I could talk about that all day and the fabrication of their FDA testing and massive hiding of evidence that has been proved in a court of law. The cattle drinking water from the factory was the tip of the iceberg.

If you're up on your agricultural batshittery, you'll know that Dupont is the company who used to promote farming with dynamite in US farms back in the turn of the century. Obviously, that turned out to be an environmental disaster.

The point is, these things that get introduced by big companies without proper testing, en masse, without adequate safeguarding or accurate public information, don't always end well and we need to openly question them and hold those companies to account and discuss it without being shut down by facetiousness.

Well said @MiraculousLadybug

Yes very well said @MiraculousLadybug .
People berating others for questioning the science is how humanity has got into a LOT of trouble historically!

So can I ask what cheese doesnt have Bovaer and milk or any dairy products such as cheese strings ect

I can’t find any? I’m still confused as to whether organic products can contain it or not. Yeo Valley claim theirs do not, but what about Tesco organic range?

I'm ordering tesco organic milk but doesn't say weather it has it init

Organic is fine

And @Ellybean1992

No organic products including organic milk can legally have Bovaer in.
The Soil Association will not grant/keep Organic Farm status to any farmer using Bovaer on their organic farm.

This is because Bovaer does not meet the requirements to be organic.

There's no evidence anywhere of any risk.

The quoted risks are where rats have been directly exposed to very high amounts of the compound (not milk produced from animals fed the compound even in high amounts)

There's compounds in breast milk which cause brain damage & death if given in large enough quantities eg Iron, that doesn't mean large amounts of breast milk pose any danger.

This all sounds like the whipping up of a conspiracy theory similar to GM in 90's & 00's

Quite. People 'doing their own research' but not understanding the science. Perhaps not surprising given the climate change denial exhibited.

Thats also why I was highlighting all the other chemicals that can potentially make their way into milk that nobody gives a second thought about. This has become a conspiracy because there's an agribusiness involved.

If you could feed your dairy herd sea kelp (like many Scottish farmers have been doing for years), which reduces methane by over 60%, why would you want to trial Bovaer which reduces methane by 20-30%?

Could it be perhaps that nobody can patent sea kelp and therefore not make profit from it? 🤔