Total Food Safety. Assured.
The vegan product industry has been growing steadily in the past few years. But what does vegan mean? How do we know that a food labelled “vegan” is actually completely plant based? In this webinar, Sandra Meixner, Global Food Authenticity ATIC Program Manager and Jürgen Schlösser, food authenticity expert discuss the growth in the vegan testing industry and the difficulties in creating and testing vegan foods.
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intertek.com
Follow us on- Intertek's Assurance In Action || Twitter || LinkedIn.
Total Food Safety. Assured.
The vegan product industry has been growing steadily in the past few years. But what does vegan mean? How do we know that a food labelled “vegan” is actually completely plant based? In this webinar, Sandra Meixner, Global Food Authenticity ATIC Program Manager and Jürgen Schlösser, food authenticity expert discuss the growth in the vegan testing industry and the difficulties in creating and testing vegan foods.
Social Media:
LinkedIn | Twitter
intertek.com
Follow us on- Intertek's Assurance In Action || Twitter || LinkedIn.
You are listening to another episode of assurance and action. The podcast that covers key assurance topics brought to you by Intertek. My name is Jessica D'Amico and today I'm joined by Sandra Mixner global program manager for HX food authenticity services, Melissa, a food authenticity expert with over 30 years of industry experience. They're here to talk about the development of vegan food industry standards. Do you want to click it from here? Yes. Thank you, Jessica. And you're so great to hear you. I thought of you were the weekend. Hi, you know, I've been in a supermarket and guess what I saw they're selling vegan potting soil, and I thought that was fascinating. And you doing these audits. Can you tell me what it is? Do you have any idea what that means?
Speaker 2:And you have to take a look inside in you're putting four forms and Beatles barks on it's crazy, crazy. You know, we have done together. A lot of audits. I have done it for, for Intertek, of course, and found really some crazy sings. And the most people are, don't know what they are doing. Exactly. So see, there, they are some labels on bottles or glasses and glued with a bone. And they said, Hey, there, the bone glue is not in the product, so it doesn't matter. Hey, come on. Vegan means that you need any piece of often anymore, including the bones or, or see some, some, some caps for the bottles inside. It's a little bit, lot from pigs. So then needs goes easier on the bottle. So it's the same. So it doesn't matter if the cones goes don't goes in the product or see, um, I have company which is producing frozen, ready meals to normal ready meals and vegan ready meals. And then
Speaker 1:In airplanes or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For the supermarkets and they are producing normal meals and, and vegan meals and Hafsa and tomato sauce. And when I go into the warehouse, I saw this canisters. Yeah. It's looks like really the same. So here's a tomato is also for the normal product and they are the tomato sauce for the vegan product. And then I call it, Hey, how it can be a mistake. You, you take the, the, the, uh, tomatoes for the bottleneck sauce with smirk and vis meat flavors and put it on the vegan product. Now I never do it. Yeah. They will do it. So it's easy to make mistake percent. I see. Then, um, I told you next week I have a new[inaudible] Purdue wine producer. And, uh, in one of the audit that there wasn't an wine farmer, which are buying wine in a tanker truck. And I asked him, do you control all the farmers who prepare some wine? Because the wine is furred. Yes. Sometimes it's furthered and sometimes they clarified it with mid protein and this wine company didn't know how they clean the wine. So this is crazy. And on the bottle is written. That is a vegan vine, but it's not correct.
Speaker 1:Um, it's, it's so much more than only the ingredients from, from what I hear. And that makes it a little bit difficult to, as a consumer to, to really understand for tomato sauce. Or if you don't look too deep should be vegan, but they can be very, uh, very difficult or complex things that don't lead to a vegan claim. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. You don't know where the product comes from. Yeah. It's only written something and behind some animal products behind what does mix comes from or whatever. And, but, but there'll be, people don't want that, that anything from an animal, uh, to place in our food.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And even not the glue for the label. You're right. Yeah. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2:And it's, it's rough, so, so easy to find it all, you need really a lot of experience if you make an audit by, by this kind of company. So I have, yeah. I spoke spoken robot bottles about ready meals, about wine, about chocolate, whatever you want to. Yeah. If you go through, so this company, you have to follow the normal, normal production ways or incoming goods. They are what they are doing. They are very often I asked for if you're an under chain management. Yeah. Or how, how you mix the separation between the normal product and the wean product and how you declare the other, uh, allergens and vegans. So, and then I see the really they take care or specification are done and I have an exact specifications. That's this raw material is for, for vegan products or they have nothing. So then everything is crowded and you can see that directly by incoming goods and doing the production. Yeah. I will ask for cleaning[inaudible] tests, the cleaning. Yeah. With my eyes. Oh, and not correct because yeah. Yeah, because they don't know that only some molecules of milk. Yeah. And then you have not an, a vegan product, but you can see this little bit of milk and this is a
Speaker 1:Grease. This is not enough. No,
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. Unfortunately. So you see, um, a lot of experience guide us, um, to this really vegan products, but I'm not really happy with the orders, what we have done in the past, because we haven't done it very often. Only one time as this is. Yeah. You see the production only, only one time in the whole life. And one year later they build up new, absolutely new production line or take new raw materials from new suppliers, from new countries. And, uh, you are not really sure that it's really vegan product too, like in the past. So that makes me a little bit sad. So for my point of view, we need a lot of more audits and auditors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, we gained this experience over the last years and the problematic thing about vegan is that there's no really legal binding definition, almost nowhere in the world, and everybody has their own definition or, um, even more stronger or not so strong. But I think in general, the approach that we had, um, to have a combination of this different services, like, uh, pre-questionnaire, uh, audits or inspections on site and, and also some testing in general, that makes sense. But then, then on a, on a more regular level, and, uh, as you said, uh, it's so important to be onsite and to understand even details that you can't find in the specification.
Speaker 2:I remember only, only one company, they are producing chocolate and of course they have milk chocolate, hazelnut, chocolate, and dark chocolate and the production side. And they call me because they know that there is a little bit merch in the dark chocolate and they want to produce vegan chocolate and asked me, please take plague as our first production to be sure that really there is no merch in this vegan chocolate. And I found out that in this production line, there are some small areas where the milk comes from. Okay. It was not so much. Yeah. I sent samples in, in your lab in Braman and we found out it's a one, a under 100 PPM. So that's from my point of view was it was okay, but this is a nice project. Yeah. The company was not sure that this chocolate is really a vegan chocolate and called, uh, one guy here, control it, please. And then, um, they are on the safe side, but the most companies are producing something. So from my point of view, this is a combination about inspection audits and very strong partner in the background who was able to found out what they are really using in their production. Is there any sing from animal insight or not? So, and in this combination, we are on the safe side.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I mean, you could do a smaller inspections during a certain period of time and then have reordered again and do some mystery shopping truly independent from, from any many inputs. Yeah. I like that idea. And we have crossed the topic of allergies. I mean, from a food safety point of view, we are quite safe with vegan, um, in terms of cross contaminations and so on. But if that substance is then milk again, um, it's getting more difficult and risky. Uh, I think, uh, because if somebody who has an allergy and thinks vegan is good because I can avoid animal products, um, and then you have traces of milk. This could also lead into a more problematic case.
Speaker 2:This is a very big problem because if, if you have an allergy problem with milk and then you saw it, or I can, can eat vegan product because Merck is avoid, but, but there is a little bit more work and maybe it's too much for, for, for an allergy, for somebody who has a problem with it. But unfortunately it's not easy to avoid the whole milk, especially by chocolate because they are not able to, to clean it with water, like in the normal productions. Yeah. They can clean it only with this cocoa butter. And it's very, very expensive in there. I've seen that they clean it eight hours, eight hours, eight hours, w w with chocolate butter. Um, and at the end you find 10 PPM of merch after eight hour cleaning. So it's not so easy, really. So this is a little bit mystery because there is no really rules behind how much milk or other, uh, um, uh, meat products, uh, can be, can be in our food or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I think you're with you together, we could set a pretty good standard for this, which is a good, an applicable for, for this type of topic and need it, do it, to avoid some, uh, labeling of, of, uh, things that are not really working, uh, behind. Yes.
Speaker 2:If you, if you want to, to like work for vegan products all over the world at first, we have to train a lot of our Tito's. They have to have the same experience like us. Yeah. They have to go through total different production site, like milk and meat and pills and powders and pizza and whatever. So, and at the end, then you are able to find out where are the misery sings on this production line, all but incoming goods of finished product, really? And of course, to take samples everywhere or to make step controls through the production. So to find out where it comes freely from light, like in the chocolates, it's, this was really very, very nice product because we go step by step and on every step we take a sample, control it in your lab. And then we knew we had comes from God philosophy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That comes additionally. And I think that's a good approach too, to understand that together with the customers when it's happening. And we have a lot of companies now that are going on vegan products and not only meat companies, but also others. And then it's natural. The cross-contamination can happen. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And see, not only food see all or closest our shoes,
Speaker 1:Vegan charcoal. I was wondering if you can only grow mice with weaken charcoal, but that's a different topic.
Speaker 2:I think there, there are a lot of possibilities if you really want to produce everything without something, from any mill, it is possible to do it including parking for why not.
Speaker 1:Hmm. Yes. Why not? Thank you both for your time. If you're interested in learning more about the development of the vegan food industry, please follow the links in the podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and rate us and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.