Farmers are defending Fonterra, over its handling of the botulism scare.

An independent inquiry has criticised Fonterra for its sub-par response to last year's botched botulism scandal.

But Federated Farmers dairy chair Andrew Hoggard says nobody's perfect.

"Everyone else putting the boot into Fonterra over not performing, but quite frankly unless you're really challenged no one knows how they'd react."

Andrew Hoggard is confident Fonterra's response would be much better, if the situation were to be repeated.