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Quorn has added egg white to its Sweet Chilli Mini Fillets, which used to be vegan, in what appears to be a trend among meat-free food companies.
The fillets were popular among vegans, who can now no longer eat them. Quorn has recently introduced three new Mini Fillet flavors — Tikka, Fajita, and Roast — which all contain egg whites. There are no vegan versions of the product available.
Read more: Plant-Based Meat Companies Look To Use Real Animal Fat
Vegans have expressed dismay at the changes, wondering why it’s necessary to add egg to a product in which nobody will be able to taste it. Egg whites are used as a binding agent, but Quorn uses vegan binding agents such as potato starch and tapioca starch in its vegan products instead.
Mixed messages
Quorn’s decision to add animal products may be particularly confusing to customers in light of its new marketing campaign. In a commercial for its snack range, it uses the tag line “So tasty, why choose the alternative?” The commercial features puppets of a cow, a pig, and a chicken swooping into someone’s kitchen, Mission Impossible style, to swap out her meat snacks with Quorn ones.
Quorn says it only uses free range eggs in its products, but this is no guarantee of good animal welfare. A recent investigation by Animal Justice Project into several British free range egg farms found dead and decomposing hens left on the floor of barns. Many hens could not access the outdoors, though that is a key requirement for eggs to be considered free range.
Read more: More Than A Million Chickens Feared Dead After Huge Illinois Barn Fire
Free range egg brand the Happy Egg Co has also previously been exposed for “misleading” consumers about the welfare of its hens. PETA found hens on three Happy Egg Co farms crammed into barns, where they pecked each other out of stress and lived among dead birds and huge amounts of their own waste.
Quorn has previously explained it’s decision not to make its products fully vegan as it wants to appeal to flexitarians as well as vegetarians and vegans. Nor is it the only company to have added animal ingredients into previously vegan products. Cauldron Foods made its entire range vegan in time for Veganuary 2023, but has since added egg whites into its sausages.
