Deconstructing The Scientific Legitimacy Of Arla's 'Planet Friendly' Milk Initiative

How it started:

How it’s going:

Somewhat taken aback and obviously peeved about the understandable public reaction to their grand experiment upon cows and consumers which they justify as safe, effective and necessary in order to stop the planet from burning up, Arla have issued this arrogant and dismissive statement:

Last week we announced that we would be running a project of a cow feed supplement called Bovaer®, a product that has been researched for over 15 years and is already used in many countries around the world. Bovaer® has the potential to reduce methane emissions from cows and is part of our efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of our products.

Unfortunately, since we made this announcement, a significant amount of misinformation has been circulating online, and we feel compelled to address this by clearly and openly stating the facts.

Our commitment to reducing our climate impact is unwavering but we would never do so in a way that jeopardises the health of our consumers or the welfare of our animals.

DSM Firmenich - the manufacturers of Bovaer® - provides these facts about the product that's fully approved for use in the UK:

• Bovaer® does not filter through to humans when they consume dairy products.

• Regulatory bodies, such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the UK Food Standards Agency have approved its use based on evidence that it does not harm the animals or negatively impact their health, productivity, or the quality of milk. A statement from the UK Food Standards Agency can be viewed here: Bovaer cow feed additive explained – Food Standards Agency

• Bovaer® has undergone extensive testing to ensure it is safe for cows and humans.

• Bovaer® is specifically designed to break down in the cow's digestive system and quickly decomposes into naturally occurring compounds already present in the stomach of a cow. This means it does not pass from the cow into the milk.

• Bovaer® has been worked on for 15 years, and is being used in approximately 25 countries across more than 200,000 cows

• In December 2023, Bovaer® was approved in the United Kingdom – it is currently approved for use in 68 countries

• You can read more about the Bovaer® product here, on the DSM Firmenich website, manufacturers of Bovaer® - dsm-firmenich-statement-bovaer-november-2024.pdf

Alongside the 2,000 farmers across the UK who own Arla, we work hard to produce healthy & quality food every day. We work to ensure that this is done safely, whilst also working to reduce our impact on the environment. 

Arla Foods UK

Take that plebs!

The FSA approved Bovaer for use in the UK. We should have as much confidence in them as we have with the MHRA who authorised the ‘safe and effective’ Covid vaccines.

But quite apart from discussions on whether Bovaer is ‘safe and effective’ and concerns over the legitimacy of the organisation who have deemed it to be so and authorised its use in the food chain, I want to look at the ‘necessity’ argument, i.e. is it absolutely necessary for UK dairy cows to be fed methane reducers in order to help prevent a ‘climate catastrophe’ (defined as the world passing the 1.5C Paris global warming target).

Whilst it’s very touching that Arla’s “commitment to the climate” is “unwavering”, what is the factual, data-driven, scientific basis of that commitment? Or is it religious? Like Muslims’ commitment to Allah? No, surely, it can’t be the latter. A company like Arla would not commit to re-engineering the bovine enteric system and adulterating the entire dairy food chain with a chemical substance (present or not in the end product, safe and effective or not) based on a belief! It must be science. Sure enough, Ash Amirahmadi, The Managing Director of Arla says:

“Our targets have been approved by the Science-Based Target Initiative as consistent with emissions reductions required to keep global warming to 1.5⁰C, making Arla the first large dairy company in the UK to receive this important approval.”

Approved by the ‘Science-based target initiative’ eh? Must be legit. Or maybe not.

Because, actually, we are supposed to accept this statement as hard factual science based evidence - in all its glorious scientific vagueness: in effect, a handwaving appeal to authority (provided with a reference so tiny you need a microscope to view it).

The reference is to the science-based targets website which is a masterclass in corporate-speak and meaningless waffle from a bunch of scientifically challenged green wonks who likewise just appeal in turn to the authority of IPCC ‘science’ whilst pretending to legitimise and authorise ‘science-based’ targets by any private company (like Arla) who apply to them to have their batshit crazy ‘sustainable’ innovations and emissions reductions targets legitimised and authorised.

Not one of the executive staff at Science-based Targets has a relevant climate/meteorological qualification or career experience. The CEO is a lawyer. The only member of the executive team who has a proper scientific qualification is the Chief Technical Officer, Alberto Carillo:

Does that qualify him to authorise urgent and immediate methane reduction targets for dairy co-operatives in order to stop the world burning up? No, all he does is defer to the ‘expertise’ of IPCC climate scientists who say we’ve got to urgently reduce methane emissions, globally, from all sources (not just dairy cow farts) if we want to prevent the world from warming beyond the 1.5C limit and thus minimise the risk of ‘catastrophic’ climate change.

So, if you are looking for a quantitative science-based analysis to justify the reduction of methane by cow farts and the eventual adulteration of the entire dairy food chain with a chemical concoction which may or may not be safe and effective and may or may not be present in the end products, either from Arla, or the organisation which it outsources its scientific credibility to – forget it. And anyway, what gives Arla the right to outsource its alleged ‘science-based’ justification for interfering with our food to a company which employs hardly any scientists and in fact, what gives that organisation - Science-Based Targets Initiative - the right to authorise another private company to interfere with our food? I want to know. I want to know especially in light of the lack of scientific qualifications of the executive staff of that organisation and especially in light of the sources of funding of that organisation. Because this is the list of organisations funding Science-Based Targets initiative:

These are the past funders:

I’m not happy with UPS bank, Bezos, Bloomberg, Amazon, the Rockefellers, IKEA et al funding the reorganisation of and interference with my diet in order to save the planet from a ‘climate crisis’ invented by the Guardian editorial team in 2019 thank you very much! In fact, I would go so far as to say they can shove that idea so far up where the sun don’t shine that it comes out where the sun does shine.

The ‘scientific’ justification for reducing methane globally from all sources (NB. the contribution to global methane emissions from UK cows is vanishingly small) consists entirely of the following:

/ The observation that methane, as a gas, is more effective at absorbing and re-emitting long wave infra red radiation than carbon dioxide (though it remains in the atmosphere for a considerably shorter time than CO2).

/ The highly dubious conclusion by the IPCC that global warming ‘impacts’ - most especially extreme weather - will be significantly reduced if we limit the increase in global mean surface temperature post 1850 to an arbitrarily chosen 1.5C vs. 2.0C.

Regarding the latter (which is based upon climate model assessments), Professor Judith Curry has this to say:

IMO, even with erroneous attribution of extreme weather/climate events and projections using climate models that are running too hot and not fit for purpose of projecting 21st century climate change, the IPCC still has not made a strong case for this massive investment to prevent 1.5C warming.

[my emphasis]

If we’re talking Net Zero, let’s start with this: there is net zero scientific justification for stopping cows from farting naturally, the way they have done for hundreds of thousands of years. Get in the bin Arla.