New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra admits lawbreaking to settle greenwashing lawsuit

The world’s largest dairy exporter, New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra has admitted that the packaging on its flagship Anchor-brand butter breached fair trade laws in order to settle a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace Aotearoa in 2024.

The lawsuit alleged that Fonterra misled customers by prominently featuring on its packaging the claim that Anchor butter is ‘100% New Zealand grass-fed’. In reality, Fonterra allows its cows to eat palm kernel expeller, an imported supplementary feed which has potential links to the destruction of rainforests in Southeast Asia.

New Zealand is the largest importer of palm kernel expeller, a product of the oil palm industry. The feed has notoriously murky supply chains, and in early 2025, Greenpeace Aotearoa used research from Rainforest Action Network and Nusantara Atlas to link companies selling palm kernel into New Zealand to illegal deforestation in Indonesia’s Rawa Singkil Wildlife reserve.

Greenpeace Aotearoa Agriculture campaigner Sinéad Deighton-O’Flynn said: “An admission of guilt from New Zealand’s biggest company is a massive win against corporate greenwash everywhere. It’s simple, companies shouldn’t be allowed to mislead customers in order to sell products.

“Fonterra has admitted that its packaging was likely to mislead consumers. The truth is that its supposed ‘100% New Zealand Grass-Fed’ butter could be linked to the destruction of paradise rainforests in Southeast Asia.

“Fonterra is just the latest in a chain of meat and dairy corporations who have been held to account for their greenwashing. It’s clear that the writing is on the wall and people are fed up with corporate greed and manipulation.

“If our governments won’t hold these polluters accountable, people will take to the courts and the streets to do so instead.”

Notes:

Fonterra is set to finalise the sale of its consumer brands – including Anchor Butter – to French dairy giant Lactalis later this year.

This admission from Fonterra builds on a growing wave of legal accountability for the meat and dairy industry.

In March 2024, the Danish High Court ruled against Danish Crown – Europe’s largest pork producer – in a landmark greenwashing case, finding that its ‘climate-controlled pork’ labels were misleading and lacked independent verification.

In 2025, Greenpeace Denmark and Sweden filed formal complaints against Arla, Europe’s largest dairy producer, for systematically overstating its climate progress. The complaints, submitted to regulatory bodies in both Denmark and Sweden, allege that Arla misled the public by claiming a 13% reduction in supply chain emissions since 2015.

Documentation suggests nearly half of this reduction resulted from a 2016 change in calculation methodology rather than actual carbon savings. These complaints are currently under formal review by the relevant authorities in both Denmark and Sweden.