iPolitics By Janet E Silver. Published on Mar 5, 2021 5:41pm In the week since the Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) asked their members to consider using alternatives to supplements containing palm byproducts, vice-president David Wiens admits there’s no way to gauge how many farmers have complied with the request. The controversy, dubbed “buttergate,” arose in recent weeks from online discussions of why butter wasn’t getting soft at room temperature. That led Dalhousie University professor Sylvain Charlebois to write in the Canadian Grocer last month that, “since last summer, thousands of dairy farmers have been using livestock feed that has palm oil in it,” calling it the “most plausible reason” for the hardness of butter.