Kerrygold Abu!

When I was a kid, there were always small cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk in the larder. I'm not 100% sure what it was used for, but seem to remember my parents using it for coffee creamer. And my mother may have used it in some recipes. 

What I do remember about it was the Carnation Evaporated Milk came from contented cows. Or so we were told in Carnation ads.

What, exactly, a contented cow is, I couldn't tell you, but I'm picturing a dopey-looking, cud-chewing Holstein meandering around a pasture on a balmy, sunny day, until it's time to sashay into the barn so that Mr. Green Jeans can milk her.

Anyway, I don't remember anyone taking Carnation on for false advertising.

Kerrygold wasn't so lucky.

They weren't claming that the cows whose milk is used in their butter were contented - although, aside from the rain, I would imagine that Irish cows are plenty contented. The Kerrygold claim to fame was that their cows were grass-fed. 

I guess that whether cows are eating grass or not is a lot more provable than whether or not they're contented, contentment being pretty much in the eye and mind of the beholder. So there's that basis for a suit. But a fellow in California took legal umbrage to the grass-fed claims, and brought suit against Ornua Co-operative (which produces Kerrygold), saying that he'd been:

...“misled into purchasing Kerrygold products due to false and misleading advertising.” For several years, he bought Kerrygold dairy products, sometimes at a price premium, with the understanding based on product advertising that cows used to generate the milk for the products were only fed grass...“Rather than disclose the use of non-grass feed, as other partially grass-fed competitors do, Kerrygold deceptively implies that its products are derived from cows that are fed only grass,” (Source: Feed Navigator)

The plaintiff said he never, ever, ever in a million years - or something like that - would have bought Kerrygold if he'd known that those Irish cows were also gulping down soy, corn and other grains. Guess it wasn't enough that Kerrygold butter tastes great.

Ornua argued back that they never said that their cows eat nothing other than grass. And they've got a point. You may be what you eat, but just because you're a meat eater doesn't mean you're exclusively eating meat. Same goes, I suppose, for grass. And cows.

Admittedly, Ornua may have been implying that their Bessies and Bossies - or whatever they call cows in the Old Sod - were supping exclusively on the green, green grass of Ireland. But you can also argue that it may just have been a case of the plaintiff inferring.

Anyway, the judge in the case dismissed the suit, leaving Ornua contented. 

As for the plaintiff, he did want to turn it into a class action suit on behalf of all those duped by Kerrybgold - include me out - so maybe he thought that there'd be a few bucks to come out of the suit. But you do have to wonder what his game was. What damages did he incur? Why tie up the courts? Why not just stop buying Kerrygold, write Ornua a letter asking for a refund (or save the overseas stamp and email them), blast them on social media? A suit seems pretty frivolous.

Me? I'm always contented with Kerrygold, the butter of choice chez moi. Unlike blandly whitish American butters, Kerrygold is buttery yellow. And it tastes like, well, butter. What more can you ask for?