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.’

My thoughts on this are as consumers we deserve to know as much about what is in our food as possible when very clear labelling. Then we can make a real choice, badly informed or otherwise.
It's a no from me, but I'll assume it's in anything I choose when eating out, which is relatively infrequent.

Does anybody know if dairylea dunkers have Bovaer can't find nothing on there website i have emailed them doubt they'll get back to me till next week have food shop 2morrow so need know weather to cross it of my list lol iv crossed so many foods I gey from tesco lol went to butchers got there meat instead

PR014 is the Muller bottling plant at Droitwich.

The slight complication in the story is that due to logistics milk processors will often implement a 'milk swap'. Imagine an Arla farm next door to a group of Muller farms. Arla will agree with Muller that the Muller lorry will pick up the Arla farm's milk and either Arla will return the favour or they will sell the milk to Muller. The milk market is hugely complicated with this kind of thing happening all the time.

I believe there are dedicated supermarket milk pools where farmers are paid a premium to supply a particular supermarket and stick to extra standards over and above the normal regulations. In this case milk swaps don't happen.

The process of converting to organic farming is relatively straightforward but cannot happen overnight. The land belonging to the farm must undergo a two year conversion period where it is farmed under organic rules (no pesticides, artificial fertiliser, stock cannot be fed feed with GM ingredients) but nothing sold will be certified organic until after this period so essentially you have higher costs and no increased return for the first two years. There are annual inspections to ensure the rules are being adhered to which are very indepth

There is little government support for organic farming unfortunately, with organic management payments being halved in the last couple of years.

There is currently a shortage of organic milk in the UK, which cannot be rectified overnight.

Thank you for your insight.

Ooh does it work on humans? There are a few in my office who I'd like to produce less methane, sounds fab!

They did some tests where they fed cows various amounts NOP-3 for 57 and 90 days. They concluded that a safe dose for cows was 200 mg per kg, even though at that dose it shrank the cows ovaries, reduced serum ALT and LDH activities (don't know what that means but it doesn't look too good) and the cows were eating and drinking less. At higher doses it shrank their hearts as well. This apparently was of no concern as milk yields were unaltered. It seems that 3-NOP is pretty nasty stuff but only a tiny amount gets into milk, if any. I think it doesn't sound great for the cow and puts the farmer at risk as Bovaer comes as a powder that must be mixed with feed (3-NOP shrinks the tested as well). I suppose the real question for the consumer is if the metabolite NOPA which passes into milk is dangerous. They say it is not so as it's not genotoxic. There are other possible metabolites but these are glossed over in the literature. They did tests on several different species of animals but haven't seen the results on those.

I have seen something that says the metabolites of 3-NOP are normally found in the body so doesn't look like milk and meat containing them should pose any risk to the consumer. I haven't stopped eating Arla products but I still don't think this should be rolled out across the UK as it's not good for animal welfare and poses a hazard to the farmer.

Now that IS interesting!
So even harder to say whether Bovaer with certainty, or stil totally traceable?

That’s really sad - they should be trying to get to the point where organic is the majority milk

That’s really interesting - do you have a link to that study info?
I just wonder how they deem what level ‘safe’ for humans. When the side effects of shrinking ovaries and testes happened at the levels they said are ok for dosing.

No problem.

I also meant to address your comment that OF&G will be reviewing the issue in the future. I think that's just a catchall in case it does turn out to be completely safe.

It's surprising what we can't use organically. One example is that we can't use synthetically produced Vitamin E in supplements. Another is that certain disinfectants are banned. In processing, all equipment has to have a final rinse with only potable (ie safe to drink) water, whereas in conventional processing you are allowed to put a final rinse through with a food safe chemical.

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post, that was in reply to @Karina12345

I know a couple of farmers (in forrin) that farm organically who refuse to get certified as they say that the restrictions are against animal welfare wrt using medication if an animal is sick.
but I don't know if that's only the case in that county or a general organic requirement. is there an internationally agreed standard? probably in the eu?

I think the British public may have a say in this. There was a scramble this morning over the last few cartons of organic milk - at 7.30am !

There is an EU standard and an international one. As we've left the EU ours is now UK rather than EU but it will be equivalent.

I suspect the farmers you know just don't want to go through the process and cost of certification as much as anything.

The main rules are that you cannot blanket treat as a preventative. For example if you have a group of animals and there are some sick ones you can't just treat the lot in case.

You can use most treatments if you can prove a need but you must observe double the withdrawal periods. Withdrawal period is the time after a medical treatment when the animal can enter the food chain, or if it's a milking cow, when her milk can go back into the food chain (we 'dump' milk from treated cows)

Ultimately animal welfare always comes first. If, in unusual case an animal could not be got better under organic rules, it would be decertified, ie no longer organic.

I don't have much patience for people who say they 'farm organically ' without being certified because in my opinion they are riding on the coat tails of those of us who do go through the process properly. And unless they actually are certified and inspected they could be doing things which are not within the rules and still making that statement.

dairyfarmerswife

I take it you farm organically, do you also do PWAB?

https://acaf.food.gov.uk/3-nopassessment
This is the link ( really ashamed I had to get someone to show me how to do this !).

Yes we are PWAB. We have been for about 3 years.

How have you found being PWAB?

Generally fine. You can use abs in youngstock up to 12 months prior to calving although tbh we don't tend to use any, maybe one animal a year.

The main challenge is udder health. We use a lot of uddermint! And anti inflammatories. Cells run a little higher than we would like but that is improving now. We also dry off a quarter if it's not getting better.

We've been teat seal at dry off for ages anyway, we find that works fine, you just have to be really clean. We're planning to teat seal heifers this time too as we've had a few to many cases in fresh heifers (spring block calving).

For injuries we've had a lot of success with manuka honey on wounds.

I guess you are in dairy...? Are you looking at moving to OH?

We've been organic for 25 years, PWAB for 2.5 years.

If I'm being honest, I'm not a huge fan of PWAB.

thank you for the explanations @dairyfarmerswife

According to an article in the Daily Mail, M&S have acknowledged they have been using the additive since April in the 40 farms supplying their milk.
I can't believe they can just do this without labelling.

That’s absolutely outrageous 😡