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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.
Thank you for confirming my taste buds suspicions. Having purchased and researched a “raw” honey at a warehouse style shopping store lead me down a dark path. Makes sense with the state of our affairs. May we grow fierce in our wisdom. Deep Peace to all.
Walmart carries Kerry Gold butter also.
Dear Sarah,
I can confirm that you are correct about the claim of Irish dairy cows being supplemented with feed supplement, mainly consisting of grain. Doubtless non-organic, and probably GMO as well. Though they are still fed mostly on grass, hay, silage, or “haylage”, (more than some supposedly “grass-fed” cows) this is a widely known fact in Ireland, and all over the national media as well. TWICE this past season the main dairy co-ops increased their prescribed allowance of percentage of feed supplement in response to the “fodder crisis” 1 (from the heavy rains lasting into April and May, slowing grass growth and exhausting hay and silage supplies) and then “fodder crisis” 2 in August from — you guessed it, drought. Furthermore the government was subsidizing the purchase of extra feed (both in grass and supplement form) just to prevent many (esp. dairy) farmers from ruin. This is because of the bad farming practices pushed on to indebted farmers by the government, corporations, and $$ interests. 2018 was an exceptional year, and it is impossible to know for certain, but I would estimate that average percentage of grass-based feed for conventional Irish dairy cows dropped from low 90s to low 70s this year, and at some points was 50-50 or even lower. **Meanwhile MOB GRAZERS in the British Isles, with deep-rooted, species-diverse, and microbially-active pastures had record grass growth this year bc of being able to capture all the extra sunlight !! **
Going from bad to worse, Irish conventional farmers (who supply Kerrygold) spray the dickens out of their pastures with petroleum-based artificial fertilizers AND herbicides every year, which in addition to spreading harmful chemicals, kills microbial life in the soil and chelates (AKA “locks up”) all kinds of minerals and micronutrients from entering the grass. Knowing all this, and that Kerrygold is still admittedly a much better butter than most supermarket brands in the US, what a testament it is to the power of (even drugged-up) grass. (And the shockingly low quality of the other stuff out there.)
Finlandia butter is excellent and one of the best
Butters avaialable in the U.S. The cows are
Grass-fed as well. To say that something is not healthy because it is carried by Walmart is
not fair to Finlandia or Walmart. Finlandia
cheese is also excellent.
The difference between lab tampering and hybridization which can happen in nature, is radiation and forcing change. If it takes that much “power” to make a change, doesn’t that tip you off that it’s wrong? And most GMO foods have been changed so they tolerate glyphosate (which separates the cells in our guts, leading to leaky gut), and get sprayed with huge amounts. BT corn actually pokes holes in the cells of our guts, this is a statement from Jeffrey Smith or one of the other people who spends many hours researching the subject. So people should not be lax in their attempts to stay away from GMO, the info is NOT an exaggeration of the harm which can come to our health. At a minimum, people should be informed of what they’re consuming and what the animals ate.
I also want GOOD healthy butter. After reading this blog and comments I looked up Finlandia butter. It’s available at Walmart. I just feel it cannot be a healthy product if Walmart carries it.
This is ridiculous…. still far healthier than traditional margarine . And MANY grass fed cows are supplemented with some grains. I know GMO regs in the EU are pretty strict compared to the USA so I’m sure what the cows are ingesting is still minimal. I worked on a farm with delicious grass fed beef but we still supplemented them with grains and also never claimed they were 100% grass fed. The grains were more like a treat than a diet staple and you could still tell the difference in the meat from typical grocery chain meat. Oh and FYI…. the changing of food genetically goes back thousands of years they just didn’t do it in labs. They did it through decades of cross breeding. Thank ancient indigenous people for the corn we have today. I used to be totally anti gmo but I’ve learned not to buy into the hype from either side. I keep it to a minimum as best I can but fact is it’s everywhere now. Good luck totally avoiding it. Personally I like Kerrygold but I recently started using Finlandia which I am totally satisfied with.
I just purchased a package of their unsalted butter sticks and was surprised by both the color (yellow) and how soft it was straight from the refrigerator. From reading the comments I am glad to know the yellow is how butter should appear, but what about the margarine like texture??? Less butterfat? Whipped and then molded into bar form?
Frankly, I’m so disgusted with misleading marketing or labeling these days and I purposely bought the sticks because it said the cows are grass fed and usually the stick form of butter has more flavor than the whipped.
Thank you for the enlightenment.
I have purchased and eaten Kerrygold for years thinking it was a quality product of grass fed cows. I’ve even encouraged friends and family to buy Kerrygold. I am mightily disappointed to find that the cows are supplemented with corn or grain that I personally wouldn’t put on my table or in my mouth. So, sadly, I will go on to search for another TOTALLY ORGANIC butter. Thanks Monsanto for ruining yet another natural process.
Sarah, what an interesting read on butter! Having grown up on raw homemade butter my whole life, I do enjoy Kerrygold butter and buy Kerrygold butter without any problems. Various butterfat contents from different breeds of cows will have taste differences… “Low-Fat” butter would mean just that not as creamy. Not sure about GMO being permitted in Ireland.