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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 appreciate the information in your blog and I’m so disappointed to hear that my favorite butter is not as pure and wholesome as I had been led to believe. I guess I will switch to another organic brand. Not quite as full-bodied and tasty but at least a bit cleaner. Thank you.
Sarah I’ve been buying Kerry Irish butter for a while now, but I have a big concern . Twice I have put my so called soft butter in the microwave for a few seconds and low and behold both times it sparks like my microwave is on fire. It happens within seconds. I”m concern what they have added to this butter. I will no longer buy it. Has anyone eles had this issue?
Thank-you for the heads up on Kerry Gold Butter, if they are feeding GMOs I will never buy their butter again. Ill be notifying everyone in my family as well as friends and acquaintances. GMOs cause cancer, we dont eat them ever
Thanks again Sarah – I depend on you! My conclusion is that ANY butter sold in a grocery store is going to be pasteurized (in the USA anyway). And regardless of whether it’s labeled pastured, organic, cultured, amish, natural, etc., it’s going to be devoid of nutritional value. And in the US I don’t even trust that, “organic” pastured animals are safe from glyphosphates and contaminated water from neighboring farms and upstream water sources. So after all my research, I’ve decided to just reduce my butter usage to just for flavor (on my buckwheat pancakes and a few other things) and make small amounts of butter from my local raw milk farmer, and get my cooking fats from organic nuts and seeds.
I purchased Kerry Gold for the first time yesterday. The taste was much richer than the Challenge butter I have been using for the past couple of years. But ~ after eating the Kerry Gold yesterday and today, my production of gas is way higher than normal, and the activity in my digestive system is quite amazing and noisy. I don’t get that reaction from grass fed beef. I’m wondering what it could be?
Jeanne, infection with BLV (bovine leukemia virus), an oncogenic retrovirus, can cause enzootic bovine leukosis that, in less than 5% of cases, results in lymphosarcoma, a malignancy of the lymph nodes. BLV infection, harbored in the lymphocytes of the blood, results from an exchange of bodily fluids rich in lymphocytes, such as blood or colostrum. These include day-to-day herd maintenance practices such as injections, rectal palpation, tattooing, tagging, and dehorning. Inadequate herd space fosters high-risk contact between infected and non-infected cattle, and is further complicated by vector-borne transmission of BLV carried out by large biting flies. Transplacental infection can occur during pregnancy, or in the immediate postpartum period when calves of infected dams are dependent upon their mothers’ colostrum for nourishment.
The latter is the only way in which the virus is transmitted via feeding. Because BLV is only rarely found in non-blood bodily fluids (urine, mucous, semen, feces), they are deemed noninfectious. A lifelong antibody response develops in cattle once BLV infection occurs, but most never demonstrate overt clinical signs of disease, and less than 5% develop lymphosarcoma. Even so, infected cattle can still harbor and transmit BLV to others; therefore, vigilant eradication programs are essential for control of the virus. These involve frequent testing and culling of the herd, and disciplined employment of blood-borne disease regimens. Because BLV is transmitted principally via blood/ lymphocyte-rich bodily fluids, any changes to a herd’s food/feeding environment (organic/grass-fed vs. GMOs) will have no impact on the BLV infection rate.
There is a higher incidence of BLV in dairy herds than exists in beef, a prevalence that increases with a herd’s size. In the U.S. (where eradication efforts are voluntary), approximately 45% of dairy herds, and 10 % of beef herds, are infected with BLV. This varies widely internationally, from 10% in Australia and New Zealand (where there are government-mandated eradication efforts) to as high as 85%.
I’m not sure what prompted your query about bovine leukemia virus, but will hazard a guess that it has to do with the media attention given to studies that speculate on BLV’s possible association with breast cancer in humans. Ever since BLV was isolated as the cause of enzootic bovine leukosis in 1969, scientists have been searching for possible evidence that BLV could be transmitted to humans, eventually concluding that none existed. However, more recent studies have discussed scientists’ discovery of BLV antigens in human serum samples, and their position that the presence of antigens did not necessarily confirm infection with BLV. Follow-up studies examined the presence of BLV DNA in a range of breast tissue samples (study subjects either had breast cancer, premalignant changes, or normal tissue). 44% were positive for the DNA, which was limited to the secretory mammary epithelial cells. These exciting findings appear to confirm that the BLV retrovirus can replicate in humans, and that it plays a part in the development of human breast cancer. But they are very preliminary, and they confirm the importance of conducting further research on these findings. In an era of very scarce sponsored research funding, such studies may be even more of an endangered species, given the potential for significant financial impact on the beef and dairy industries, and the strong political power of their respective lobbyists in Washington, DC.
Has anyone else noticed that the Irish butter does not get soft anymore while outside the refrigerator? We live in California and even tested all other butter products and had noticed that none of them get soft anymore. Any thoughts?
Do you have opinion on Amish butter?
The “Amish butter” that is fooling so many people isn’t actually made by the Amish at all .. it comes from large slabs of factory produced butter cut and wrapped by Amish workers. Such a scam as you can note by the pale color indicative of cows NOT eating grass. Real Amish butter (which isn’t called “Amish butter” but simply purchased directly at an Amish dairy farm) is deep yellow.
Just came across this post. I’m baking as I write this, and guess which butter I’m using? Yep, Kerrygold. Thanks for the update. It helps in making informed shopping decisions. I wonder if Kerrygold would consider changing their GMO supplements to these cows, considering how many people are truly opposed to it?
I’m sorry, but to the person saying Kerrygold is cheating people because it is YELLOW and they ‘know’ butter is white because they grew up on a farm…well, my mom grew up on a farm too. In a state world famous for dairy cows. I’ve seen more dairy cows than most people.
Butter can be white, yes, and often is, depending on what the cow eats and how much and when. However, yellow is NOT automatically an added due. If the cow eats enough grass and flowers, and depending on how much butterfat you leave in the butter, it’ll be yellow.
You mentioned milking, but if you ever churned, the butterfat is WAY yellow. Again, it depends on the season and diet, but yellow butter is in no way automatically dishonest and it’s not very nice to go around telling people otherwise.