Dive Brief:
- A months-long shortage of butter in Japan, where the Christmas meal consists of fried chicken and a series of butter-heavy cakes and cookies. is reaching a "crisis" stage as the holiday season approaches.
- Christmas is about the only time of year that Japanese cooks use a lot of butter. And this year, there's simply none to be had. When stores get an order of butter, and that's not happening often, shoppers are limited to one box each.
- The shortage can be traced to a number of factors, including a decision by government regulators in 2006-07 to downsize the dairy cow herd in Japan, and a brutally hot summer that left cows producing less milk than expected.
Dive Insight:
Japan's embrace of butter, even if it comes just once a year, is a fairly new phenomenon. The heavy consumption of animal proteins by Westerners has always disturbed the Japanese, who were sort of grossed out by the smells emitted by people who ate large amounts of meat and dairy. That's why a common Japanese slur for Westerners remains bata-kusai - "butter stinkers." But bit by bit, in the years after WWII and the occupation, butter - and Christmas - found a place in Japanese life.
Interestingly, the Japanese butter crisis comes just three years after a similar shortage brought havoc to Christmas in Norway.