Marking food as vegetarian

Nature Boy

I was reading the thread on non-veggie sugar and was going to post this in there but I recon this is a topic in itself.

How do companies go about determining whether their food/drink etc is suitable for vegetarians? Do they just consider the ingredients themselves and say "ah yeah that's ok" or do they have to get an independent company to assess the product in order to mark it as vegetarian?

How strict are the laws on this? Would ingredients like sugar be checked before marking a product as veggie? If something has been made using an animal product but isn't in the final product can it still be marked as veggie?

Plastic Scouser

If you see something marked with the 'Vegetarian Society Approved' symbol, then the following rules must apply to that product:

1.Products have to be free of animal flesh, meat or bone stock, animal carcass fats, gelatine, aspic or any other products resulting from slaughter

2.Products and ingredients should not have been tested on animals (cut off date 1986)

3.Eggs used must be free range

4.Products must be GMO free

5.Products must also be free from cross contamination with non vegetarian products/ingredients in the production process.

However, it seems that companies who use their own symbol instead, have their own rules, so you'd probably have to check out specific company/supermarket websites.

Some info from the BBC website on food labelling:

Experienced vegetarians know that labelling is a bit of a pest as there is no requirement for companies or shops to label products vegetarian, so some do and some don't. Some companies have their own vegetarian symbol, some use the Vegetarian Society logo and some say 'suitable for vegetarians.' If a product has nothing on it, it might still be okay but the only way to check is to go through the list of ingredients. Even then, some ingredients or additives may not be suitable for vegetarians. Hidden trips to look out for are:

*Meat stock: found in otherwise veggie looking products such as soups
*Gelatine (or E441): found in foods such as ice cream, low-fat spreads and yoghurts, pots of desserts, sweets and nutritional supplements
*Animal rennet: found in some hard cheeses
*E102: the red colouring cochineal, made from crushed insects. E542 is edible bone phosphate which is non-vegetarian
*Many wines, beers and ciders: are 'fined' or clarified using ingredients such as gelatine or isinglass (derived from fish)

Peanut

Actually e102 is tartrazine (also worth avoiding) and cochineal is e120.
I know this because I noticed it in a pack of carmelised peanuts in Dunnes a couple of day ago!

e numbers

Thoushaltnot

I was just gonna post that question - whether the various V symbols printed on labels meant anything really and whether there were any other issues to be aware of (sneaky workarounds, industry legislation, etc.). I was pretty shocked to find out that most booze is not vegan friendly and even more shocked to recently discover that sugar could be suspect too - but this isn't even hinted at on labels. Thanks, peeps for the details, so far.

BTW, since this is an old thread, an update. The vegetarian society now has a few product magazines available to download, with an interesting read on fining issues and options in producing drinks;

http://www.seedlingshowcase.com/corporate08/vegmag.asp