Since Arla announced that it was trialling Bovaer on 30 dairy farms, “social media users” (this tells us very little about who they are other than they got spooked by something they saw on social) have been throwing their milk down the drain.
Bovaer suppresses the enzyme that combines hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the cow’s rumen to form methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. When it has done its job, it breaks down into compounds naturally present in the cow’s rumen. That’s what I know, and I know that because I looked it up. It has been extensively tested, and it has been approved for use in the UK for eighteen months. It won’t sour your milk, contaminated your cheese, or turn you into a violent raging zombie (OK, nobody is saying that. Yet).
It’s easy to judge these “social media users” (I did sort of jump to judgement when I first saw the story), but the most I can get angry about is that people are wasting perfectly good milk.
If you want to object to the use of Bovaer, a more plausible reason would be that given by Pasture for Life – which is that Bovaer is an industrial solution that perpetuates business as usual industrial farming, when what is needed is more sustainable management – fewer cows within the ecological carrying capacity of land. That’s also on us, to buy less food (particularly dairy and meat products), the best we can afford, find more sustainable alternatives where we can (plant milks are more sustainable though nutritional value and biodiversity impacts vary), eat more thoughtfully, and absolutely not to waste what we do buy.
Meanwhile, we all live in the real world, systemic change is going to take time, and the jury’s out (this is a trial after all), but Bovaer might help mitigate against harmful methane emissions at a time when we probably need to be prepared to try everything. Bovaer, and fewer cows.
If you like cow juice and want to avoid Bovaer though, buy organic. It prohibits the use of Bovaer. Also, buying organic means that animal welfare standards are likely to be higher, prophylactic antibiotic use is banned, organic farms are often more biodiverse, micronutrient levels in organic milk are likely to be higher and organic farmers are paid a fairer price.
If you’ve thrown milk away because of Bovaer, have a think about what else you eat, and what’s in it. There’s more to worry about. Nitrates and nitrites that preserve food while being carcinogenic and interfering with your thyroid. PFAs, dubbed ‘forever chemicals’, likely to be in your water and much of what you eat including fish and associated with thyroid disease, testicular cancer, increased cholesterol, liver damage, fertility issues, and harming unborn children. Ultra-processed foods, drivers of obesity, depression, type 2 diabetes and cancer. If you start throwing away all the foods that might harm you, there’s a lot you might want to throw out before you get to the milk.
You can drive yourself crazy thinking about what you eat, or take control and ask questions, do your research and be prepared to challenge your assumptions and preferences. And absolutely don’t trust scare stories on social media. Even take this blog post with a (small) pinch of salt.
Timely I thought, that as I read the news about milk-chuckers, I was also reading a book chapter on artisanal foods written by my tutor at the University of Exeter, Professor Harry West. This passage leapt out:
In the realm of food, some would argue, modernity (defined by the consolidation of national markets, mass production of foodstuffs and their transport over increasing distances) and more recent trends (including new processing technologies and the global integration of food markets) have given rise to a contemporary ‘food system’ characterized by ‘disconnection’ and deceit… modern consumers, who ‘do not know where (or how) much of their food is produced’, are disconnected from productive processes and food producers, as well as from foods that come to them through bewilderingly complex supply chains comprising agribusinesses, industrial processors and supermarkets, while producers are disconnected not only from consumers but also – along with consumers – from the cultural and natural ecologies that once gave context to the growing and making of food.
For modern consumers… relationships with food are characterized by ‘anxiety’, whether about consequences for consuming bodies of industrial agriculture and agricultural biotechnology – heightened by ‘food scares’ arising from the proliferation of zoonotic diseases and more virulent foodborne pathogens – or about the impact of such food on traditional knowledge systems (from farming to cooking) and natural environments under threat of destruction or disappearance.
West, Harry G. (2016) ‘Artisanal Foods and the Cultural Economy: Perspectives on Craft, Heritage, Authenticity and Reconnection’, in The Handbook of Food and Anthropology, eds. James L. Watson and Jakob A. Klein, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 406-434.
It feels like half the battle for us as anxious consumers would be to reconnect with our cultural and natural ecologies — and there is no better place to start than through our food.