1Mar
Still vegan?
Do you ever buy the Dairy Free Sunflower Spread from Marks and Spencer? I wrote about the awesome vegan labelling of this product a year ago, but things seem to have changed since then.
It is no longer labelled as vegan. What gives?
My partner Josh reached out to the company via Twitter to see if he could get some answers. This is what he was told:
How strange.
It is still vegan but they couldn’t fit the word vegan on the tub? The word vegetarian fits, but not vegan?
As Josh pointed out, vegan is a cover-all word that encompasses vegetarianism so it would make sense to use the shorter ‘v’ word.
This is a bit of a blunder. Come on M&S, show some vegan love and common sense.
It’s not just M&S that seem to be going back in time. I noticed yesterday in Co-op that all the biscuits that used to be marked vegan are now only vegetarian, but nothing seems to have changed on the ingredients.
Be careful there Emily, they did de-veganise my favourite biscuits a few years ago for no real reason 🙁
I had a similar conversation with M&S, but with the dietary team (allergies) – it appears that its because the legally must be added vitamin D may not always be vegan; and that the big producers of vit. D are not keeping separate production lines any more.
A couple of the big supplement producers have recently changed their packaging to reflect the similar issues.
That’s interesting gfg… so I wonder whether M&S are correct in stating that it is still vegan if they can’t be 100% sure about the vitamin D?
I think because in December new legislation came in about having to label allergens properly (including dairy) some food manufacturers are being extra careful about vegan and non-vegan items being produced in the same places. We just had to change our sunflower spread for this reason.
Tyrrell’s Chilli crisps are no longer labelled as sfv, either.
I contacted them twice about this, but they couldn’t be bothered to respond.
🙁
It would seem that the new labelling legislation is creating more problems than it solves.