By Eloise Gibson of RNZ

Fonterra has used social media to reassure customers it is not using a feed additive designed to lower cows’ climate impact.

But a trade expert says food exporters have little choice but to reduce the planet-heating impacts of their products, if they want access to the most lucrative global markets.

The dairy giant was caught up in misinformation around the use of Bovaer, a supplement that shrinks the planet-heating gases burped by dairy cows by about a third.

The product is not used in New Zealand, because trials showed it was not very effective in animals mainly grazing on pasture.

Just before Christmas, BBC’s Inside Science podcast reported on a social media backlash to well-known brands of milk, butter and cheese sold at major United Kingdom supermarkets, produced using milk from lower-methane cows.

The trend featured people pouring milk down the drain and vowing not to buy it again.

Food scientists explained the product had been tested as safe and was not present in milk or meat from animals that ate the supplement, but posts on platforms such as TikTok received millions of views.

Bovaer, sometimes called 3-NOP, is the first widely commercially available product used by farmers to slash the potent heating gas from beef cattle and dairy cows.

New Zealand has thrown millions behind the global effort to discover such supplements, here and overseas.

Trials dating back to 2015 show 30% reductions in feedlot and barn-raised animals from Bovaer.

But trials by Fonterra and others in systems like New Zealand’s show it is only around a third as effective on pasture-grazing cows and sheep, because animals have to eat it mixed in every bite of food to get the advertised impact.

After false rumours Fonterra was using the product, the dairy giant tweeted that food safety and quality were its “number one priority” and that Bovaer had not been approved for use on New Zealand farms.

The company would not be interviewed about the backlash but told RNZ by email it wanted to reassure people its products were safe “given the range of claims and misinformation being shared on social media”.

But other methane-cutting products are coming, and Fonterra plans to use at least one of them to get a 7% reduction in methane by 2030.

New Zealand company Ruminant Biotech has developed a small metal capsule or bolus, which delivers a methane-squashing medicine called bromoform straight to an animal’s gut.

It is on track to be ready this year and should deliver long-lasting methane reductions in grazing animals.

Fonterra is also trialling a bovine probiotic, Kowbucha.

Food exporters had little choice but to show how they would slash emissions win lucrative trade contracts, NZ Trade and Enterprise head of sustainability Florence Van Dyke said.

“In 2021 no country globally had mandated climate disclosures and today more than 85% of New Zealand exports by value are going to countries with climate-related disclosures in place or proposed.

“And this obviously extends well beyond Europe, where sustainability regulation has traditionally been most common.

“Climate-related disclosures are in force or coming into force in the likes of Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, India and China, which is New Zealand’s largest trading partner.

“These usually require large companies, often listed companies, to publicly disclose their carbon footprints and most of the time that include suppliers’ carbon emissions as well.”

Multinational food companies had set ambitious targets to reduce their climate pollution, Van Dyke said.

“Multinationals are the greatest driver, so companies like Danone, Nestle, Mars, Tesco and McDonald’s are mandating that their suppliers measure their emissions, and most of the time they’re going one step further and requiring suppliers to disclose their carbon reduction plans.

“These global retailers are applying that European standard to their operations globally.

“An example is McDonald’s in China requiring carbon reduction plans from their meat and dairy suppliers, which of course includes New Zealand exporters.”

There was high trust in New Zealand’s food safety system, Ministry for Primary Industries chief science advisor John Roche said.

He was confident that most consumers would accept additives that made it through this country’s safety checks.

“Food is deeply personal and we’ve seen that as people have protested in the 1990s around GM foodstuff.

“I can’t guarantee you there won’t be people who object to the fact we use methane inhibitors, or object to the use of probiotics.

“But it was a very small number of people who got very loud airplay for a short period of time.”

He said companies using Bovaer had not stopped, suggesting they believed their customers overall were in favour — and New Zealand farmers, too, would meet the demands of their markets.

“Our food system is approximately a third of the world’s greenhouse gas footprint.

“If markets are demanding it and processors are reading those signals — and they are — then New Zealand farmers have always risen to the challenge.”

Low-methane cow breeds are also on the horizon, and Fonterra is targeting additional methane reductions from farming changes such as improving feed.

An emissions price on methane and the other major farming gas, nitrous oxide, has been put on hold until as late as 2030 but government analysts say there may still be voluntary pick-up of methane-cutting technologies by farmers.

How much remains to be seen.

- RNZ