Chocolate biscuit spread update

Don’t put a jar of chocolate biscuit spread in front of a vegan, tell them it’s vegan and then tell them it isn’t vegan. We will cut you.

Ever since I posted this story about a supposedly vegan bourbon biscuit spread sold by Tesco, my social media has been blowing up with folks telling me they had been informed by the chain that it contained non-vegan ingredients. I decided to dedicate a couple of hours of my life to finding out the truth.

Here is what I was told via a phone message left by a Tesco customer service operator:

This product does not contain milk however the site that it is made at does produce other products containing milk therefore we wouldn’t advise it was suitable for vegans.

I pushed for a little more info and Tesco staff kindly contacted the producer to narrow it down as such:

Having spoken to the supplier, they don’t have a separate mixing container for the bourbon biscuit spread. The bourbon spread is made using the same equipment as the dairy spreads but of course it is washed between batches. None of the ingredients used for the biscuit spread contain milk.

The final word is this: none of the purposively included ingredients in the bourbon biscuit spread contain animal derived products but there is a chance the product contains trace elements of milk proteins due to shared equipment.

Is this vegan enough for you? Does a mixing bowl washed between batches put you off or is the fact that all of the ingredients are vegan enough to make you OK with it?

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