It's all about economics
OPINION: According to media reports, the eye-watering price of butter has prompted Finance Minister Nicola Willis to ask for a 'please explain' from her former employer Fonterra.
According to media reports, professor of econiomics at Auckland University of Technology, Niven Winchester, believes further development of synthetic milk could seriously disrupt the entire economy.
The scale of disruption though would vary, and there is slow progress at present towards making synthetic milk economic. Even so, dangers lie around the corner, according to Wichester.
"Large-scale production of synthetic dairy products - that decreases the price of New Zealand's largest export commodity - will have a significant negative impact on this economy," Winchester says.
This issue has arisen after years of analysis which argues that putting grass into a cow is wasteful because a lot of the output is diverted into growth of the animal. The claims is, putting a feedstock such as sugar into a test tube could produce milk which has less waste and lower environmental side effects.
