's. A score of three is given to something that is a typical example of its style with nothing too outstanding or bad about it.
Masterfoods, the company behind brands such as Mars Bars, Twix and Bounty, have been using rennet from calf stomach in many of their popular chocolate and ice cream products since May 1st (at least in the UK anyway). Many vegetarians eat their products but may not be aware of this change, as Masterfoods don’t seem particularly eager to publicise it.
As a vegan, this doesn’t particularly bother me. What does irk me big time is the fact that the company, in their statement, think that ‘less strict’ vegetarians won’t have a problem with eating part of a calf’s gut.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A ‘LESS STRICT’ VEGETARIAN!
People who merely give up red meat are not vegetarians. People who eat fish are not vegetarians. People who eat dead baby cow stuff are not vegetarians.
Vegetarians do not eat flesh, fowl or fish or anything that comes from ’em. It’s pretty fuckin’ simple, yet these multi-national idiots still think they can get away with it. A quick straw poll of my veggie mates in fact showed that 100% of ’em thought Masterfoods could fuck right off. The morons from Mars should’ve done their homework a bit better.
Oh yeah – GO VEGAN TOO!
We’ve set up a website to campaign against the move. Please visit:
http://www.marscampaign.org
Thanks.
I understand that you are a vegan, but we’d like it if you’d help spread the word, so that lacto-vegetarians can at least eat the chocolate – and that no Veal derived rennet is used in our name.
Although I’ve accepted your comment, I don’t really agree with you. The point I was trying to make (obviously not that well :D) was about how big corporations and their kind try to twist the meaning of language to almost Orwellian proportions. In this case they didn’t get away with it. But remember that they’ll try again – this is the company that once claimed one of their fatty, sugar-laden products would help you ‘work, rest and play’ rather than leave you spotty, lardy and with a mouth full of cavities.
And they once funded animal research that involved inducing dental decay (in monkeys if I remember right), which they ended only when an animal lib group claimed to have placed poisoned Mars Bars on supermarket shelves (they hadn’t, but the hoax worked).
Not only that, but the company behind the chocolate are ranked only just above Nestlé in an ethical audit performed by Ethical Consumer.
And it’s still pretty unclear exactly what products are vegetarian again – if you must eat this rubbish, you need to be checking the ‘best before’ date very carefully and making sure that you’re eating the British version.
I’m not claiming to be perfect but, when it comes to stuff like chocolate, whether you’re veggie or not there are much better options for you, the producers, the planet and the animals.
You can also avoid eating that shit altogether. As I grew older (or rather too old…), I developed a strong distaste towards packed food with too many generic ingredients. I eat chips from time to time (& some other things too), but I feel much better when I eat a whole piece of something solid (preferably cooked by someone I trust) rather than a mish-mash of who-knows-what. The worst being, in my opinion, that no one has ANY idea whatsoever of the conditions under which such products as milk & cocoa were harvested when it comes to mass products like these. Can I drink fair trade coffee & eat a bar of something which uses cocoa essentially extorted from its producers? Can I drink bio-milk & then eat some bar using milk from animals kept under deplorable conditions? Can I worry about syndicalism & support companies with such practices? I don’t think so… This goes beyond the vegan issue of course & thus is partially unrelated, but I think it’s food for thought for non-vegans…