Mars starts using animal products: BBC

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

Some of the UK's best-selling chocolate bars, such as Mars and Twix, will no longer be suitable for vegetarians.

Also affecting brands such as Snickers and Maltesers, owner Masterfoods said it had started to use animal product rennet to make its chocolate products.

Masterfoods said the change was due to it switching the sourcing of its ingredients and the admission was a "principled decision" on its part.
...
Masterfoods said it had started using rennet from 1 May and non-affected products had a "best before date" up to 1 October.
...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6653175.stm

I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but this is just wrong. It's also clearly a cost-cutting measure, although they obviously would never say so outright. But what ingredients are being replaced?

[rurallib]

1. O Puke

:puke: :puke:

[myrna minx]

2. Rennet is used in cheeses as a coagulant, so I'm assuming that it will be used for that

purpose in the um, gulp, candy too. That's too bad.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Dairy products in milk chocolate candy bars?

Heavens to Mergatroid!

[5X]

4. Rennet is not a dairy product but produced from stomachs of calves.

Link:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet>

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. I stand corrected.

I thought it was another term for the curds.

[China_cat]

6. Even if you were wrong about that

unless they're using human breast milk, isn't milk an 'animal product'?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Yeah, but I think many vegetarians are fine with dairy.

Mostly because you don't have to kill and slaughter an animal to get dairy products.

[dragonlady]

8. They won't be kosher anymore either

This is not a good decision from the business point of view. Kosher consumers are a significant part of the market. Mars will lose their kosher certification from reputable rabbinic organizations because this animal-based rennet is not going to be from kosher animals (that would be too expensive) and it wouldn't be proper with food containing dairy in any case.

Results from a new study profiling kosher food shoppers indicates that kosher consumers want more new products that they can find easily. Indeed, kosher has come a long way from being viewed as a set of dietary restrictions observed by only a fraction of the world's population. In fact, according to a 2005 Mintel Organization International report, Kosher is a $14.6 billion industry and ranks among the fastest-growing segments in the retail food business. Furthermore, it's been reported that while retail food sales grew at about 6% in 2006, kosher food sales grew 15%.

http://www.aeb.org/EggProducts/EGGSolutionsENews-April2007.htm

[juno jones]

9. Sounds like they have to

come up with a substitute for all the cocoa butter that they will no longer be using.

Run, don't walk, to your nearest health food section/store or chocolate boutique and start assaying brands like 'endangered species', 'Dagoba', 'Newman's', etc. They are a few pennies more, but from better sources and zillions of times tastier. I am sorry to see Snickers Bars pass, but I have disliked the too-sugary, poorly textured chocolate of the commercial brands for years (they began to change formulas in the 1980's, I noticed a lot of changes then).