The Green Party has been accused of scaremongering over claims that milk taken from cows grazed on landfarms is unsafe.

The Green Party is calling on Fonterra to stop taking milk from Taranaki landfarms where oil and fracking waste has been spread and covered in Taranaki.

"People don't want to drink milk from cows grazed on pasture with petroleum industry waste beneath it," Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman said.

But regional council spokesman Gary Bedford said the claims made in the TV3 coverage appeared to be either confused or deliberately misleading.

"I'm not sure what technical competence Russel Norman has to challenge agricultural guidelines and say they are not up to it."

He said landfarms were quarantined and then underwent extensive testing before cattle were put back on them to graze for milking.

Cattle were never grazed on a landfarm that was still in use, he said.

Federated Farmers Taranaki has also hit back at the Greens, saying the party's scaremongering over rehabilitated landfarms is putting at risk New Zealand's milk export.

"The Green Party media release I saw is like going into a packed theatre and yelling ‘fire'.

"I think we are hitting new lows in politics when the sum total of a political party's research effort is a television news segment," Federated Farmers Taranaki provincial president Harvey Leach said.

Mr Leach said Federated Farmers had confidence in the council's testing process.

"Unlike that party, Federated Farmers has asked questions and knows there is a double testing regime in place for rock cuttings and clays.

"Taranaki Regional Council is incredibly rigorous in what it does. Fonterra further tests for contaminants when it collects milk to ensure integrity of the entire milk supply chain."

Questioning the integrity of our major dairy exporters also put at risk our $12 billion dairy export industry, Mr Leach said.

Mr Bedford said the TV3 report that toxic elements from the drilling waste such as lead and arsenic could contaminate milk was misleading.

"The sensitivity of our testing is so great we can sometimes detect elements such as arsenic, lead and mercury. We'd be detecting the same if we took samples from your front lawn."

He said the suggestion the elements were present in sizeable quantities was ridiculous.

The Greens also said the regional council was not a neutral umpire when it came to fracking and the oil industry, but an advocate. "This issue highlights how the Government's petroleum development plans are creating a reputation risk for the dairy industry," Dr Norman said.