petition in favor of labeling vegan products

[dimpylz]

Hey all! I heard about this petition through an e-mail discussion group I participate in. Here's a clip:

The Food and Drug Administration should require specific labels on all food products, stating whether or not there are animal derieved products in the ingredients. This petition proposes that there be different types of labels on each product stating if they are: vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore.

go here: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/VegLabel/

to read more about it, and sign! Thanks!
Morgan

[LadyFaile]

wow that's quite the list of animal ingredients there.
i signed the petition :)

[YumHummus]

How did I miss this post? I signed!

[punkrawkmama]

I signed!

It would also make it easier for people who have allergies! (Companies don't always put allergy alerts on).

[Herself]

Consider it done. ;)

[Critter]

Hey that's my petition. That makes me happy the word is getting around :) YIPPEE!!!! Yes, please sign it everyone this could help lots of people.

[Verbivore]

I'm not sure that these online petitions really work. A lot of the other petitions on that site are pretty dumb. I think it would be more effective to write to companies directly.

[VeggieMonster]

<--- #269 on the list :)

[Critter]

Yea a lot of the petitions online are pretty rediculus but they can work. I have a written one also. I don't think writing the companies would be as effective as writing the FDA. One company may decide to label their products which yes is progress but it doesn't help as much as I would like it to. Perhaps I have high hopes with the whole petition but I would like vegans and vegetarians to start being reconized. I grew up in Iowa and it was crazy how many people just weren't familiar with vegetarians, which caused a lot of harassment and endless arguments. I think by getting as many signatures as possible and then sending the petition to the FDA we are hitting the labeling at the source. After all they are the ones who require nutritional labels and hopefully veggie labels can be seen right next to those labels. If they can tell us what the food is doing for us by listing calories, vitamins, etc then they can tell us if what we are eating is suitable for veggies, we are people too and have a right to know.

[Critter]

*bump*

I am still working on getting signatures for this cause

[RedWolf90]

I signed!

[Marumm]

The problem with this is that vegan and vegetarian are interpreted differently, especially by vegans and vegetarians. It's not black and white like stamping 'fat-free' on something can be.

But I guess it's a start.

[majake]

very true not Marumm, and vegans themselves have trouble agreeing on what is vegan. Sure most things are easy, but then you get to sugar and simliary made products, it gets more difficult.

[J Fizzle 81]

I signed~

My questions is where does this information go? You talk about the FDA, does that mean once you get to a certain point it, you will send it to the FDA? Does it go automatically? Do we just hope they see it?

Im just curious :)

[Critter]

I will be sending the petition to the FDA myself. I also have one that I pass around that I will also be sending them. I will need thousands of signatures before I send it. I now have a website that directs people to my site...well I have a place to go, I haven't got the site up yet. Spread the word if you could tho, it's http://www.thenewfoodlabel.com/

[kpickell]

I signed... but was a little discouraged to see only 380 other people have signed that petition! It will need 10000 times that many signatures to get any notice.

[soilman]

(1) The list of ingredients is full of errors!
(2) Manufacturers of various products often have as difficult a time determining the truth of whether a material, that they put in their product, is of animal origin or not, as we do. If manufacturers follow this erroneous list, we will be seeing products being labeled as non-animal, that have animal ingredients, and products being labeled as animal-containing, that aren't.

I did not sign this poorly conceived petition.

[soilman]

These are some of the mistakes I am aware of:

amino acids can be either animal or vegetable

carbamide is always non-animal

carotene is always non-animal

diglycerides can be either a or v

glycerides, glycerin, or glycerol can be either a or v

lactic acid is always made from micro-organims cultured on starchy veg matter substrate

lipid can be either a or v

Monoglycerides either a or v

urea is synonymous with carbamide, and always non-animal

http://www.materials.addr.com



by the way, I've never seen most of the items on this list, at all, ever, in any consumer product. There are also many animal materials that I have seen on labels, but which just didn't make it onto this list.

This list just about useless.

[soilman]

Critter you would have to drasticly improve the wording of the petition, and either drop the completely erroneous list of ingredients or provide an accurate list, before I would sign such a petition.

[Critter]

Well thanks for the somewhat constructive criticism. I am always open to improving it. Why don't you help me out, I wrote this by myself without other people to help add suggestions so I am more than happy to hear yours.

[soilman]

OK. Well yes, I would like to work on the wording of the petition.

But let me ask you a question about that list -- do you really help from the fda, to require of manufactures that they tell you whether "animal bones" come from animals or not -- or isn't this obvious?

Does you really need to list tallow, tallow amides, tallow glycerides, tallowates, etcetera -- or isn't it obvious that the single phrase "tallow or any compound of tallow," covers all of these?

[kpickell]

what the hell happened to the site?

lol...

[S.C.A.N.]

I signed.... :)

[Rushabh]

I got 5 on it.

[Loki]

It is really annoying trying to figure out what products are vegetarian. I would absolutely love it though if there was a kind of mandatory labelling scheme on food products, where they had to define whether they were vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher etc. Currently, British law, in the form of the 1984 food labelling act is full of exemptions, but some positive labelling is that products must specify whether they contain nuts. This is good for people with nut allergies. And if the product contains aspartame, they must state that the product contains phenalynine or whatever it's called, which is fatal to some people.

However, voluntary labelling is quite common in Britain, and many products do wish to state on their products that they are suitabe for vegetarians or vegans, but this is quite limited. If the law were to be revised, I do think that muslims, Jews, vegetarians and vegans would attempt to get labelling done in their favour, and I agree that dietary minorities should be warned about what might lurk in their products.

However, I doubt that such a law would be enacted. In india, a country where many vegetarians exist, a law was proposed that would make mandatory labelling for medicine. The fear was that some people may not take their medicine if they knew what was in it, so the law was kicked down. However, to get such laws made would be beneficial to veg*ns, and I simply hope that the USA manages to sort out a legal definition of the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" as i believe that there are no legal definitions, and then hopefully, more companies will be inclined to take up voluntary labelling of their products as being suitable for vegetarians or vegans, as it makes it so much easier.