Getting Technical about Vegan
Diane Cuny, Technical, Category Technologist
8 November 2019
As a member of the Country Choice Technical team and someone who has a followed a vegan diet for the last couple of years, I obviously had a professional and personal interest in the challenges around technical compliance both at the manufacturing level and dealing with vegan products in-store.
It is important to understand that vegan food products do not contain any animal ingredients or animal-derived ingredients. Therefore, as a food business it is essential you demonstrate that all foods presented as 'vegan' have not been contaminated with non-vegan foods during storage, preparation, baking or display.
The advice around cross-contamination and allergy information regarding vegan food products must be clear and operators must, of course, follow that advice and not mislead consumers.
Cross-contamination
There are a number of steps you can take to prevent cross-contamination with non-vegan foods i.e. vegetarian & meat-based food products.
These include:
Having separate work surfaces, chopping boards and utensils for vegan products
Cleaning utensils before each usage, especially if they were used to prepare & bake meat-based or vegetarian products
Storing vegan products separately from other food products
Washing hands thoroughly between preparing and baking vegan and non-vegan products
Making sure your staff know how to avoid cross-contamination
Baking & Displaying products
We recommend all vegan products should be placed onto a separate dedicated baking tray to non-vegan products. The use of a parchment paper on your baking trays is also strongly recommended. When displaying vegan products, they should either be placed in a separate area or on the shelf above meat-based & vegetarian products.
Allergen advice
It is important for you to be aware that food products that are suitable for vegans may not be suitable for people with allergies. We would always recommend you refer to the allergy information on our website along with the manufacturer product information that can be found on the outer case labels. Please also ensure that you are displaying our blue allergen warning shelf edge label on any of your display units.
So, whilst offering vegan products in your store does have a few challenges I really do think it’s worthwhile stocking them and ensuring you follow the steps above – according to the Vegan Society there are now 600,000 people following a diet – and we’re growing in numbers – so jump onboard!
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