The Consumer Trap

1506: 

We are all consumers and we all need help to make the right decisions.  One important help would be clear labelling of products - if something is okay-for-vegans then I hope it states “this product is suitable for vegans”.  That makes shopping easier, and incidentally it’s also promotes vegan food (although, that’s likely to be why most companies don’t do it!).

Use of the word familiarises us the word ‘vegan’.  But, unlike some other countries where helpful labelling is common, it isn't yet in Australia.  And even less so in most other countries where neither the word nor the concept of veganism is understood.

When I want to buy a food product with several ingredients, I want to be sure it’s free from those ‘dreaded items’, so “Suitable for Vegans” tells me it’s “okay”.  It makes me conscious of that company and I want to support them.

There is a legal requirement, that almost all foods of more than one ingredient must print on the packaging an ingredients list.  I go into a food store, reading glasses at hand, and examine the microscopic print on the ingredients-list, and if I see the word ‘albumen’ I don’t buy it.  Whether there’s a hint of an egg or bits of a cow’s hoof in my glue, or milk in the bread, I avoid it.  I remember what tricky terminology they use to cover their tracks – like using milk but notifying it as ‘whey’, a word not well-understood.  Or they use other sneaky terms to conceal ingredients with ‘abattoir-associations’.

If the product doesn’t contain anything objectionable, if it is in fact ‘vegan’, then they do us all a great service, simply by saying so on the packet.  Or better still, printing a tick next to the word ‘vegan’. 

We need good labelling so we can make informed choices.  If we’re eating food from abattoirs or using co-products or by-products from animal farming THAT should be clearly stated.  If you’re a smoker, you need to know that your cigarettes are carcinogenic, and it’s the same for food.  The law requires companies, not for animal-rights reasons of course, to let their customers know what is going into our bodies.  But to be comprehensive about this, labelling must extend to shoes even when it's not obvious, as with the label ‘leather uppers, synthetic soles’.  The ethic behind a vegan’s boycott isn’t partial - it's a matter of avoiding all animal-based products, even unto the shoes on our feet.

We vegans (even if, like me, you are too lazy to do it) should write, text, email, phone or front-up to product manufacturers.  Especially the “Thank you” letters - "I appreciate your ingredients. And big praise for labelling 'vegan friendly'", or some such.

I am old and lazy and forgetful and I struggle with 'font 4' print.  I have trouble on ‘ingredients’ listings if I forget my glasses.  Consequences: Can't read ingredients - do without the item.  [*Remember to write on my list ‘glasses’, then remember to take the shopping list with me!!].  If all that is ignored, then we'll buy the product and HOPE there's nothing 'animal' in it, and perhaps that's what we’ve done so many times before, pretending something is 'kosher' when it's not!!  If you’re already a vegan, then you must be doubly sure NOT to do this.  Otherwise what happens is that we are criticising omnivores for doing what they’re doing, when we're doing something not very much different.