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Kerrygold is marketed as grass-fed and all-natural, but the tub butter has concerning ingredients, dangers and marketing ploys to consider before buying.
Kerrygold, without question, is probably one of the best store butters you can buy. I myself have been using it for years for cooking.
The milk is from grass-fed cows and even though the cream used to make Kerrygold Butter is pasteurized, it is the best choice available to most folks who do not have access to raw butter from a small farm or who simply don’t want to use their precious raw butter for cooking.
I also know that many of you out there use Kerrygold too. When I conducted a Butter Poll on this blog awhile back, by far the most used butter (out of 1,500 or so total votes) was Kerrygold which received way more votes than even Organic Valley butter.
So what’s the problem?
My husband brought home the “new” Kerrygold butter the other day. On the surface, it looked fine. Nowhere on the outside of the package was there any indication that there was a problem with this butter. Here’s what it looks like.
I got suspicious with the “new” label, however. There’s nothing “new” about butter. That’s what I like about it after all!
Another tip-off that there was a problem lurking was the proclamation on the label that this “New Kerrygold” was “naturally softer”.
When I first saw the “naturally softer” words, I thought that meant that the butter was whipped and hence more spreadable. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want air whipped into my butter. This is a surefire way to get less product and get charged the same price for the privilege if you know what I mean.
I made a mental note to tell my husband not to buy this butter again because it was whipped and not as good a value.
But then, it got way worse…
Is Kerrygold Butter Grass-fed?
I took off the lid to the new Kerrygold package and saw the following words:
I had become a victim of the Big Fast One!
Kerrygold is stealthily selling LOWFAT butter and guess what? You get to pay the same price for the cheaper quality!
NOWHERE on the outside of the label did it say that the butter was low-fat. The ingredients said simply: pasteurized cream and salt the same as the commercialized Amish butter at the supermarket.
I daresay that this marketing ploy will be fooling a lot of folks who desire to buy full-fat grass-fed butter.
It seems that some butter brands have adopted what companies making substitutes for butter have been doing for years.
I have become very tuned in to these labeling tricks and manufacturer games over the years. When it comes to packaging, I double-check the ingredients along with the manufacturing processes every few months. This is even for products that I’ve been buying for years.
But how many people really do this?
Ingredient Bait and Switch
You NEED to be doing this!
Manufacturers are changing ingredients and packaging all the time! The primary intent of these “improvements” is to increase product sales and profitability. Your health is, sadly, of little to no concern in the grand scheme of things.
Reducing the fat content in its butter will skyrocket profits for Kerrygold as they will make the same per unit for the butter and yet be able to sell the skimmed cream to other companies to make ice cream or whatnot thereby increasing revenue substantially.
If you buy Kerrygold, I’m not telling you to stop buying it. I’m only telling you to beware of this new packaging nonsense and be sure what you buy is what you intend: full-fat butter!
By the way, if you are wondering why I love full-fat butter, you might want to educate yourself on the low-fat scam by learning about the history of butter vs margarine in the United States.
As for me, I will be returning this product to the store for a full refund. It is falsely advertised after all. I had no way of knowing it was a low-fat product until I opened it.
Manufacturer Response
I received this email from Kerrygold following the widespread sharing of this article. I find it very hard to believe that my blog suddenly brought this packaging error to their attention.
Do they have NO ONE on the production line in charge of quality control? This was not a difficult problem to identify. Could we have a bit of spin going on here? Perhaps so.
Dear Sarah,
Your blog has brought to our attention a packaging error of which we were unaware. While Kerrygold does sell a Reduced Fat & Sodium Butter the pack you show on your blog is 100% full fat butter which has been packed with the incorrect inner seal. There is no deliberate intent on our part to mislead our valued consumers or to misrepresent our product although we regret the confusion this is clearly creating.
We are working to identify how much product has been released into the market with the incorrect packaging so that we can replace it as soon as possible. In the meantime we would appreciate your assistance in clarifying the misunderstanding to your readers. We would love to provide further clarity — our email is [email protected] — and we are happy to answer any specific questions you and your readers may have in relation to the product.
With thanks & regards,
The Kerrygold Team
Why I No Longer Buy Kerrygold
I wanted to let all of you know that I no longer buy even the traditional Kerrygold brick butter in foil packaging. Why? A good friend visited Ireland and traveled extensively to a number of grass-based dairy farms.
This credible source told me that while the cows that provide cream for the Kerrygold butter are definitely on pasture and hence “grass-fed”, they receive supplemental GMO animal feed as well especially during the winter months. The local community and citizenry in Ireland concur and will tell you as much if you are in the area.
So, the word on the street is that Kerrygold is not legitimately pastured either.
Butter from cows that get GMO feed introduces the very real possibility of Roundup residue in the butter.
Thanks but no thanks!
While I have not been able to confirm this story 100%, I trusted the credibility of the information enough to permanently switch to another brand (I currently use this one).
I use this butter for cooking in addition to the homemade pastured raw butter I make for non-cooking purposes.
I also no longer recommend Kerry Gold in my Shopping Guide.
What about Organic Valley butter as an alternative to Kerry Gold? While I am not happy about Organic Valley’s policy that disallows member farmers to sell raw milk on the side to their community (treating them more like medieval serfs than the independent business owners that they are), I find this less onerous than deceptively feeding animals GMO feed without clearly informing the end consumer.
I love this post. We get ours from a Farmer and it’s easier for me to just get it from them. It’s the same people we get our fresh milk from as well. It’s just so sad that it comes to us having to look so deep into the company, labeling and processing of it all.
We don’t have that brand near us neither so I guess I am fortunate to know I can still get good fresh butter. I just worry if we have to move again.
I wish I could find Kerry Gold butter….I have given up hoping to find it in a store anywhere near where I live. I know I can purchase it online but that bothers me…how long would be travel at room temperature….. I went on their website and found a couple stores near here that carry it, according to their list, but it isn’t in the stores….. 🙁
Can’t believe how much we have to wade through to get to the truth.
You would think life was difficult enough, without having to ‘shop for your life’ avoiding all these innocent looking foods!!
Hi Sarah,
I also purchased this new butter because the regular was out. My purchase was made around Christmas 2011 and the inner foil did not mention low-fat. Perhaps it really was a Kerrygold mistake in the case of the product you bought. Thank you for bringing this up and at least letting Kerrygold know that we all really do care and scrutinize what we put in our bodies.
When this hit the market around here I switched over to Organic Valley cultured grass fed butter. Luckily it hit the market just as Kerrygold changed their product. Many of the markets are only offering the tubs and the bricks are getting harder to find. OV’s cultured butter tastes better than the Kerrigold tub anyway.
I buy KerryGold butter and I too purchased a tub of the new, spreadable butter. To my surprise it was too creamy, it reminded me of margarine. The next time I was in the supermarket, I looked at the other butters and I noticed that LandOLakes has a spreadable butter with added canola oil or olive oil, that is package the same as this new spreadable KerryGold butter. I have to wonder what it is they are doing to make this spreadable, I disagree with the air theory, because thats just whipped butter and whipped butter is hard straight from the fridge, and this stuff is always soft. I think Beware of the New KerryGold Butter is an approriate post, and has generated some good comments, but none have helped me to understand why this butter is so soft, it is not natural for butter to be soft like this no matter what time of year it is produced. That is the question I think KerryGold shoud answer. What exactly are you putting in there and why are you misleading the general public.
I still buy the KerryGold foil packs when I don’t have access to local pasture butter. But my suspicion is that they have added something to their spreadable butter to make it spreadable and they are not disclosing it on their label and that makes me very leary.
i believe the response they sent you, i’ve been buying this and the inner label says it has HIGHER fat content, which makes it naturally soft. if you think about it, a higher fat content WOULD yield softer butter, not a lower fat content.
What makes us think Kerrygold is any better or different from any other corporation? Its all about the bottom line these days, not the product. They aren’t running a charitable institution, they are in the business to make money, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business.
The recipe for ANY big-business these days seems to be to combine minimim overhead and maximum profit. But what you end up with the lowest common denominator. I don’t believe for a second that this was a case of mis-labeling, I just think they slipped below the lowest common denominator and got caught! Thank you Sarah!! And thank you for this blog!!
My question is- when does greed stop?
When will they (or anyone else) have ENOUGH money and just leave the product alone and be satisfied with the current profit margin?
This is just one more reason to make my own butter from raw cream. Thank God for local farmers!
Another reader from the emerald isle 🙂 Just wanted to shed some light on where kerrygold gets it’s butter. In Ireland, the milk from dairy farms is collected in the tanker truck & it goes to the local creamery. The local creamery then pasturise the milk & make the dairy products.
Kerrygold is the commercial side of the government department, An Bord Bainne (the Milk board) so you are buying your butter off the Irish government. They have first choice of the butter made in the creameries & as far as I understand, they get all the “summer” butter. Then whatever kerrygold don’t buy is bought by supermarkets for “own brand” butter.
So Kerrygold butter is made from milk from literally every dairy farm in the country. Irish cows are grassfed cows. We have plenty of grass & it’s free so farmers would be mad to pay for grain over the free grass. We don’t really have weather in Ireland, just lots of rain (lol) so there is very little time that cows would not be able to pasture. There was snow here yesterday, just a little sprinkle (which is the most we ever get) & the neighbours cows were still out in the field behind my house. When the cows are in sheds, they are generally fed hay or silage which is fermented hay (even better). There is a certain amount of farmers who give their cows grain on occasion but from what I understand from the farmer down the road, not many do it so there would not be very much grain fed cow milk in the system and I would doubt there is any at all in the “summer” milk that Kerrygold use.
All that said, very few Irish farmers farm naturally. There is fertilisers on the grass & the cows are injected with anti-bs when needed. The cows do need far less anti-bs then a factory farmed animal though.
I must admit I buy the cheapest butter I can get when I am buying. Since it is all grassfed Irish butter, I don’t need to buy kerrygold only. And I honestly do not see a difference between the “summer” only kerrygold butter & the other Irish butters. They all look & taste the same so I wonder if their summer butter thing is only a marketing thing. I also wonder at the colour of kerrygold in the U.S that you all mention. I would consider butter to be a very pale yellow ( but not almost white like some U.K butters I have seen).
Hope this has been helpful.
thank you very much; it was helpful. i live in saudi arabia and we get kerrygold here. i always wondered how they could make so much butter and feared that what we get is not grass fed like the products sold in the US. the label does not say grass fed. it says, not very helpfully, ‘pure irish butter made from cow’s milk’. even in the middle east it would not be assumed that butter is from sheep milk so i was unsure what point they were trying to make. but i know that ‘grass fed’ is not used as a marketing term here.
thanks again; it’s always good to hear from someone who’s actually there.
I live in Saudi too. Though our KerryGolds don’t say that they’re grass-fed on the front, they do say so on the below label or in the back. Without any proper certification though, who’s to say it’s a correct statement?
I currently buy Kate’s Homemade Butter “Batch Churned the Old Fashioned Way”. Made in Maine, from pastured cow milk. Yes, it is pasturized but not ultra. No growth hormones. No dyes, no preservatives.
I stopped buying Organic Valley butter upon this site’s recommendation some relatively-recent while ago. I don’t know if this butter is available everywhere, but at least in the larger east coast health food stores you should be able to find it. And it does the Taste thing remarkably.