Masterfoods gives two-finger salute to veggies

Monday, May 14th, 2007

UPDATE 20.05.07: We won! Masterfoods has gone back on its decision to use animal rennet.

As a vegetarian I can no longer eat anything produced by Masterfoods after the announcement that some of the UK’s best-selling chocolate bars, including Mars, Twix, Snickers and Maltesers, will no longer be suitable for vegetarians. Animal rennet will also be found in Bounty, Minstrels and Milky Way products, and the ice cream versions of all Masterfoods’ bars.

Thank the gods for Cadbury’s.

Masterfoods says it has started to use animal rennet to make its chocolate products. Animal rennet, for those who don’t know, is also found in non-vegetarian cheeses. Rennet can be produced without harm to, or involving animals, but sourcing it—from the stomach acids of calves, taken at slaughter—is marginally cheaper than the veggie version, which is, however, exactly the same in how it works and how it can be applied to food products.

Meat-eaters are generally clueless as to what they stuff in their gobs, and are unlikely to care if their chocolates are gummed together with gut juices from baby cows. Veggies, however, watch what we eat and as a consequence are more aware of food arguments generally, from debates over additives through to how much salt we should consume in any one day.

Masterfoods said the change was due to the company switching the sourcing of its ingredients and the admission was a “principled decision” on its part. Yeah, right. If they hadn’t owned up, and the news had got out, they’d have been sued by every vegetarian in the country. If I ate something once veggie, found out it was no longer, first thing I’d do is either projectile vomit or spit. And I wouldn’t care where I was, or who was in the line of fire.

Principled decision my arse. The Vegetarian Society says the company’s move is ‘incomprehensible’. It’s more than that. It’s an attack on vegetarian principles. But how to fight it? We can start by not eating anything produced by Masterfoods.

I can’t believe I will never, ever again eat another Mars, Twix, Snickers, packet of Maltesers, Bounty, Minstrels, Milky Way or the ice-cream variants thereof.

Corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods, Paul Goalby, is quoted on the BBC News website as saying, “If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate.”

A ‘less strict’ vegetarian? A person who is prepared to eat the coagulated contents of a young cow’s stomach is no vegetarian at all. Neither are those idiots who call themselves so when they’re happy to tuck into fish. It’s simple enough. If it had a mother, if it had a face, you can’t eat it and call yourself vegetarian at all. Goalby is at best ill-informed, at worst a bloody offensive idiot.

The Masterfoods website can be found here and, as well as not buying anything produced by the company, we can start a campaign against the idiots who made this decision TODAY by emailing and even phoning them.

That’s if we can find an email address or phone number. ANY email address or contact form or phone number on the site. Right now I’m drawing a blank. Anyone else? I can find a page all about Masterfoods UK. No number, no email.

Ah. I found a contact form on the Snickers site. That’s a good starting point.

Double ah. I went to the Celebrations site and found an email address:

contact.uk@masterfoods.com

Don’t wait! Get writing! Complain today!

If you hear wind of any other tactics, please let me know. I hope concerned people everywhere can band together to make Masterfoods regret this move big time. Let’s clog the inboxes and hog the phone lines.

I’m going to email them EVERY SINGLE DAY until this decision is reversed. Do I think it will be? Yes. Yes, I do. And very, very soon…

Currently listening to: Erasure – Light At The End Of The World – Darlene