# Bovaer, the methane-reducing cattle feed additive, poisons milk and meat and is part of a Bill Gates depopulation plot

**Verdict: Contradicted.** Bovaer (3-NOP) is a regulator-approved feed additive that cuts cattle methane burps by roughly a third. It is broken down inside the cow and is not present in the milk or meat that reaches shoppers; the EFSA, the UK FSA, and the US FDA each assessed it as safe for consumers. The viral claims that it poisons milk, causes cancer or infertility, or is a Bill Gates depopulation scheme are false, and Gates has no connection to Bovaer or its maker at all.

Category: Science, Space & Technology · Era: 2020s · First circulated: 2024 · Believed by: Went viral in the UK and wider Anglophone world after Arla's November 2024 trial, with milk-pouring boycott videos; recurs periodically
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/bovaer-cattle-feed

## Summary
The claim that Bovaer, a real cattle feed additive designed to reduce the methane cows belch, secretly contaminates dairy and beef, causes cancer or infertility in the people who consume them, and is a tool in a Bill Gates 'depopulation' or climate agenda. Real facts sit underneath the panic: Bovaer exists, it is approved and rolling out, and Gates did fund a rival methane startup. The claim we rate, that the milk on the shelf is poisoning you by design, does not survive contact with how the additive actually works or what regulators found.

## The claim
That Bovaer, the trade name for the feed additive 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP), passes into the milk and meat of the cattle that eat it; that consuming those products causes cancer, infertility, or other harm; that its safety-label warnings prove the industry knows it is dangerous; and that the whole rollout is orchestrated by Bill Gates and 'globalist' elites as part of a scheme to depopulate or control the public under cover of fighting climate change.

## Origin and timeline
- 2010s: The Dutch firm Royal DSM (later dsm-firmenich) develops 3-nitrooxypropanol, or 3-NOP, a compound that inhibits the gut microbes that make cattle belch methane. Years of trials follow, aimed at a feed additive that cuts emissions without harming the animal or its milk.
- 2021-02: The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issues a positive scientific opinion on Bovaer for dairy cows, concluding the additive is safe for the animals, for consumers, and for the environment at the proposed dose, and that its active substance is not present in the milk or meat.
- 2022: The European Commission authorizes Bovaer for use in the EU. The product, one tablespoon-scale dose per cow per day, is marketed by dsm-firmenich and rolls out across dozens of countries; it accumulates well over a hundred peer-reviewed studies.
- 2024-05-28: The US Food and Drug Administration completes its multi-year review and clears Bovaer for lactating dairy cattle, distributed in the US by Elanco. Regulators put the typical methane reduction at roughly 30 percent.
- 2024-11-26: Arla Foods announces a UK trial of Bovaer across almost 30 of its farms, in partnership with Tesco, Aldi, and Morrisons. Arla cites an average methane cut of about 27 percent.
- 2024-11–12: The announcement goes viral for the wrong reasons. Arla's post on X is viewed more than five million times and draws about 13,000 comments by early December; social feeds fill with videos of people pouring away Arla milk and Lurpak butter and calling to boycott the three supermarkets.
- 2024-12: False claims crystallize: that Bovaer contaminates milk and beef, causes cancer and infertility, and is a Bill Gates 'depopulation' plot. Posts circulate a screenshot of the product safety data sheet's handling warnings as supposed proof, and conflate the additive with Gates's investment in an unrelated startup.
- 2024-12: Fact-checkers including Full Fact, AAP, Science Feedback, and Reuters, alongside the UK Food Standards Agency, dsm-firmenich, and independent scientists via the Science Media Centre, respond that the additive does not pass into milk or meat and that the safety warnings apply to concentrated industrial handling, not to consumers.
- 2025: The scare recurs in new forms, including a viral 'cows are dying in Denmark from Bovaer' variant that Euronews and others fact-check as unfounded in late 2025.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Bovaer ends up in the milk and beef you buy, so eating those products exposes you to it.
  Evidence: The additive is broken down inside the cow's rumen during digestion into compounds the animal already handles naturally; regulators found the active substance is not present in the milk or the meat. The EFSA estimated a consumer's exposure to the relevant breakdown compound (NOPA) through milk from treated animals at least a thousand times below the acceptable daily intake. There is no meaningful dose reaching the shopper to cause harm.
- Claim: The safety label warns the stuff is hazardous, which proves the industry knows it is dangerous.
  Evidence: The warnings people screenshot come from the product's safety data sheet, which governs occupational handling of the concentrated additive: workers at plants and, to a lesser extent, farmers measuring out the raw powder are told to avoid inhaling dust and to wear protective equipment. dsm-firmenich says these are standard precautions common to many feed supplements. They describe risks of the concentrated industrial product, not the diluted feed in a cow's ration and certainly not a glass of milk.
- Claim: Bovaer causes cancer and infertility, as animal studies show.
  Evidence: The UK FSA assessed Bovaer as non-carcinogenic and non-genotoxic at the recommended dose. A carcinogenicity study noted a signal in female rats, but a follow-up analysis found the rate at the highest dose was not statistically higher than the control group. Reproductive effects on male rat organs appeared only at about 300 mg/kg, roughly a thousand times the acceptable daily intake of 0.3 mg/kg, and in animals dosed directly, not in people drinking milk, whose exposure to the additive is effectively nil.
- Claim: Bill Gates is behind Bovaer, which makes it part of his depopulation and climate agenda.
  Evidence: Gates has no connection to Bovaer, to its maker dsm-firmenich, or to Arla. The kernel people distort is that Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures led a roughly 12-million-dollar funding round in 2023 for Rumin8, a separate Australian startup developing a rival seaweed-based methane additive. Backing a competitor is not the same as controlling Bovaer, and independent regulators in the EU, UK, and US, not any investor, approved it.
- Claim: This is an untested experiment being forced on the public without consent.
  Evidence: Bovaer is authorized in dozens of countries and had been through well over a hundred peer-reviewed studies before the UK trial, plus separate safety reviews by the EFSA, the FSA, and the FDA. The Arla trial was a voluntary commercial program on about 30 farms, not a mandate; no one is compelled to farm with it or to buy the milk of farms that do.

## Why people believe it
- The trigger is intimate. Milk is one of the first foods most people ever consumed and a staple they give their children, so the suggestion that an unfamiliar chemical has been slipped into it lands as a threat to the body and the family, and fear travels faster than a rumen-chemistry explainer.
- The document felt like a smoking gun. A real safety sheet with real hazard warnings looks damning to anyone who does not know it governs handling the concentrated powder; the sense of having caught the industry red-handed is powerful even when the reading is wrong.
- Bill Gates is a ready-made villain. Years of pandemic-era 'depopulation' narratives had already cast him as the face of a shadowy agenda, so a genuine but unrelated Gates investment in cattle-methane tech was easily bent to fit a story people were primed to tell.
- It rides existing resentment of climate policy. For those who already see net-zero measures as elite overreach imposed on ordinary life, an additive introduced expressly to cut emissions reads as the agenda arriving in the fridge.
- The response was cheap and visible. Pouring out a bottle of milk on camera or vowing to skip a supermarket is a small, dramatic, shareable act, and a wave of them makes the panic look like a mass verdict rather than a viral misunderstanding.

## Open questions
- How Bovaer performs on commercial farms over years, rather than in trials, is a fair scientific question about real-world efficacy and any effects on animal health, distinct from the false claim that it poisons consumers.
- Whether shoppers should be told when milk comes from herds fed a methane additive is a legitimate labeling-and-choice debate. Wanting that transparency is reasonable; it is not evidence of a cover-up, and the safety verdict does not turn on it.
- Occupational exposure for the workers who handle the concentrated additive is a genuine workplace-safety matter, which is exactly what the handling warnings address, and is unrelated to the safety of the finished dairy on the shelf.

## Sources
- Is milk from cows fed Bovaer safe?, Full Fact (2024): https://fullfact.org/online/bovaer-bill-gates-cancer-claims/
- Bill Gates Wrongly Under Fire Over Cow Feed, Newsweek (2024): https://www.newsweek.com/bill-gates-wrongly-under-fire-over-cow-feed-1993358
- No evidence Bovaer contaminates milk to cause human infertility or cancer, AAP FactCheck (2024): https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/no-evidence-bovaer-contaminates-milk-to-cause-human-infertility-or-cancer/
- Contrary to viral misinformation, cow feed additive Bovaer shows no safety concerns for consumers, Science Feedback (2024): https://science.feedback.org/review/contrary-viral-misinformation-cow-feed-additive-bovaer-shows-no-safety-concerns-consumers/
- Expert reaction to social media posts about cattle feed additive Bovaer, Science Media Centre (2024): https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-social-media-posts-about-cattle-feed-additive-bovaer/
- Bovaer: the new dairy additive prompting boycotts and conspiracy theories, The Week (2024): https://theweek.com/culture-life/food-drink/bovaer-the-new-dairy-additive-prompting-boycotts-and-conspiracy-theories
- FDA approves Bovaer for use in US dairy cattle, DairyReporter (2024): https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2024/05/28/FDA-approves-Bovaer-for-use-in-US-dairy-cattle/
- Bill Gates backs start-up tackling cow burps and farts, CNN (2023): https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/world/cows-methane-emissions-seaweed-bill-gates-climate-intl
- “The Great Reset” Conspiracy Flourishes Amid Continued Pandemic, Anti-Defamation League (2020): https://www.adl.org/resources/article/great-reset-conspiracy-flourishes-amid-continued-pandemic

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/bovaer-cattle-feed