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Well this just gives new meaning to the idea of "dairy" in chocolate.
Britain's most popular lines of candy and chocolate have admitted that their choclate bars like Mars, Snickers, Maltesers, and Milky Way now contain whey that is derived from a cow's stomach. The enzyme rennet, which is extracted from the stomach-lining of slaughtered newborn calves and is used in traditional cheese production, is being used by the candy makers.
It now appears that vegetarians in the UK face the ethical dilemma of eating chocolate because it comes from animals.
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5-19-2007 @11:35PM Chanie said... Actually, this also affects people who keep kosher. Because milk is used to make the candy bars, the addition of the rennet (which counts as meat) means that the candy is mixing milk and meat and therefore no longer kosher. You have this same problem with most cheese, which is made with rennet. I remember when Snickers became kosher - a lot of people are going to be pissed about this. . .
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5-19-2007 @4:44PM Jason Truesdell said... I imagine there will be a lot more of these embarrassing moments from manufacturers as they rely on further-flung suppliers for ingredients and dependent on such massive scale.
In my old age I've gotten less particular about some smaller details related to my vegetarian habit, and it wouldn't stop me from consuming these chocolate-flavored candies(the taste is another factor entirely). I don't even look at which kind of rennet is in the cheese I buy because it's too much trouble.
But I know for more ideological vegetarians than me this would be a fairly serious transgression. The UK has had a pretty substantial veg contingent since mad cow emerged as a threat, so I'm still slightly surprised that the manufacturers hadn't previously given this any thought.
Fortunately, most really good chocolate doesn't actually have additional why added to it. It might have some lecithin, which could come from eggs... but I'm ok with eggs.
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5-19-2007 @6:26PM scott said... why would this matter to vegetarians? wouldn't it be more of an issue for vegans? afaik, vegetarians eat cheese.
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5-19-2007 @7:45PM cybele said... Scott - vegetarians eat dairy but not products from slaughtered animals. This particular kind of rennet can only be obtained from dead calves. (There are vegetable rennets as well. Actually the whole point of the story is that Mars doesn't know whether all the whey they use is vegan-safe or not, which is kind of a shame with the gobalization of food like this. So they have to just shrug and say that they can't guarantee that it's vegetarian.)
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5-19-2007 @8:21PM Jason Truesdell said... Scott, even many lacto-ovo vegetarians try to eschew animal-derived rennet. There are vegetable/microbial rennets that don't require the cow's stomach as the source of their rennet culture.
As for me, for the first few years I was vegetarian (I've never been a committed vegan) I cared about such details when reading ingredient labels, but since it's not like I'm chewing on a calf's stomach, I just don't care that much anymore.
For the tiny amount of additive whey protein in chocolate, it wouldn't be worth arguing about for me, but for more ideologically-driven vegetarians, I know it would be a big issue. It just depends on their motivation for being vegetarian, whether they consume dairy or not.
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5-19-2007 @10:56PM JimLad said... Mars UK have now abandoned this plan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6673549.stm
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5-20-2007 @5:58AM steph said... Our take on this was that by switching to animal based rennet, they were switching away from GM rennet. http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=140
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5-20-2007 @4:06PM ecatz said... Eat it and enjoy!
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7-07-2007 @7:31PM S A Brown said... I can't imagine someone who cares about their food enough to be vegetarian (a valid point for whatever reason) would eat overprocessed food
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