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A new report reveals that many British consumers are suspicious about whether foods labeled as ‘vegan’ actually contain meat.
The report UK Food Trends: A Snapshot in Time, compiled by food safety certification experts Lloyds Register, includes poll results from 10,000 UK consumers.
According to the data, one in five UK consumers declared themselves to be ‘not confident at all’ or ‘very suspicious’ about claims that vegan products do not contain meat. Further people were only ‘fairly confident’ about labeling claims.
‘Trust and credibility gap’
“There is a trust and credibility gap in the minds of consumers over many vegan and vegetarian products. Whilst initiatives like the Vegan Certification Scheme are important there is still much work to be done,” Stuart Kelly, Head of Commercial, Customised Assurance at Lloyds Register, said.
“It speaks to a worrying wider crisis of confidence that 80.2 percent of shoppers are either ‘very suspicious’, ‘not confident at all’ or only ‘fairly confident’ that the vegan product in their supermarket does not contain meat.
“Vegan products either do or do not contain meat, and the notion that this very black and white fact contains grey areas is troubling for the UK’s food industry. Clearly transparency and trust need to be top of the agenda for any supermarket, with a credibility gap only set to widen if not addressed via the clear and coherent compliance of the industry.”
