Those numbers in the list of ingredients you never understood may have a meaning you won’t like if you’re vegetarian.

Forget the French fries in beef tallow; the controversy about additives sourced from animal sources goes beyond multinationals, down to the toothpaste you brush with and the flour that goes into your hitherto vegetarian chapatis.

Besides the religious connotations that these issues take on in India, the right to know the content of the foodstuff you buy is your fundamental right as a consumer, and affects your ability to exercise a knowledgeable choice.

WHAT YOU ARE ENTITLED TO...
According to the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act...

* It is mandatory for packaged food manufacturers to label packages with ingredients, nutritive values and prominently display the non-vegetarian logo, which is a brown circle in a square.

* Vegetarian food items should be stamped with a green circle in a square.

* Non-vegetarian food is defined as an article of food which contains the whole or part of any animal, including birds, fresh-water, marine animals or eggs as an ingredient.

WHAT YOU GET
According to N Wagle of the Consumer Guidance Society of India, who is also a board member of various consumer protection committees, the loopholes in research allow companies to get away with much. “The point is that manufacturers use substances that cannot be chemically traced to an animal or plant origin. For instance, glycerin may be derived from vegetarian or non-vegetarian sources. There is simply no chemical way of determining the root.”

Ingredients like micronutrients and enzymes, for example, are often excluded from the determination process. While organisations like Beauty Without Cruelty are working in these fields, little headway has been made in uncovering the wide abuse of terminology.


What Can Be Non Vegetarian