• Dairy Farmers of Canada: Hard Questions Surrounding ‘Buttergate’

    Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) faced a significant public relations challenge following a February 5, 2021, social media post from a Canadian cookbook author questioning if others were also experiencing hard butter that would not soften at room temperature. Very quickly, the post received hundreds of replies in the affirmative, prompting a #Buttergate hashtag that soon spilled into mainstream national and international media coverage. The “Buttergate” controversy grew when it was speculated that the cause of the hard butter was due to the addition of palm oil to cow’s feed, with some experts highlighting the negative environmental and health impacts of palm oil. As the lobbying and promotional organization representing Canadian dairy farmers, DFC held a decades-long reputation for quality and transparency with Canadian consumers. Buttergate called this reputation into question, prompting the chief executive officer of DFC, Jacques Lefebvre, to issues a series of statements as the organization navigated the controversy, ultimately forming an expert working group to further investigate the issues that had been raised by consumers and in media reports. While everyone awaited the working group’s final report, what did DFC need to do to rebuild consumer trust in the quality of its product?
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