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Master Foods Inc (Mars, Bounty etc) now using rennet.


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BBC NEWS | Business | Mars starts using animal products

Pretty shitty idea, from any point of view if you ask me, but especially for any sort of decent vegetarian.

And if you feel the urge to blast vegetarians, just fuck off, cos your attempts at humour will probabaly be shit anyway.

That seems completely and utterly stupid, why intentionally alienate a part of your customer base for no real reason?

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BBC NEWS | Business | Mars starts using animal products

Pretty shitty idea, from any point of view if you ask me, but especially for any sort of decent vegetarian.

And if you feel the urge to blast vegetarians, just fuck off, cos your attempts at humour will probabaly be shit anyway.

Gutted, was all geared for some anti-vegetariam sentiments....

But yeah, that is a stupid idea - losing customers apparently for no real reason. It remind me of the Yorkie "Not for Girls" campaign. Sure, it was a bit of non-PC banter, but I bet they lost money. My girlfriend stopeed buying them. Silly.

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Guest Tam o' Shantie
Gutted, was all geared for some anti-vegetariam sentiments....

But yeah, that is a stupid idea - losing customers apparently for no real reason. It remind me of the Yorkie "Not for Girls" campaign. Sure, it was a bit of non-PC banter, but I bet they lost money. My girlfriend stopeed buying them. Silly.

The two are nothing alike, the 'not for girls' thing was a humerous and obviously light hearted marketing strategy...not sure about the reasoning behind this though. maybe they make the chocolate tastier

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It remind me of the Yorkie "Not for Girls" campaign. Sure, it was a bit of non-PC banter, but I bet they lost money. My girlfriend stopeed buying them. Silly.

I thought that in away would attract more girls to buy it.

"Not for me, Fuck that! I can eat a yorkie better than the average bloke!! I'll buy five in fact! Just to ilustrate my point."

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The two are nothing alike, the 'not for girls' thing was a humerous and obviously light hearted marketing strategy...not sure about the reasoning behind this though. maybe they make the chocolate tastier

Purchase of yorkie bars greatly increased when it ran that not for girls promotion, it was all the young boys that bought it, but we sold a hell of a lot more than we usually did when it was on.

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BBC NEWS | Business | Mars starts using animal products

Pretty shitty idea, from any point of view if you ask me, but especially for any sort of decent vegetarian.

And if you feel the urge to blast vegetarians, just fuck off, cos your attempts at humour will probabaly be shit anyway.

To be honest, if they can afford to piss off vegetarians, then fair play to them. In fact, they deserve to be appaluded for publicly talking about it, rather than attempting to cover it all up.

I noticed that a spokesperson for Masterfoods made the point that a lot of vegetarians wouldn't be particularly bothered by it - and that they could afford to lose the support from hardcore ones.

Incidentally, what's a "decent" vegetarian? What makes one vegetarian better than another one? I mean, I know a couple of people who are vegetarians out of simply not liking meat - and who consequently couldn't give a fuck about eating stuff like this.

At the end of the day, it's their choice if they want to include animal products - and if people don't like it, then don't buy the fucking product. Not rocket science, is it?

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To be honest, if they can afford to piss off vegetarians, then fair play to them. In fact, they deserve to be appaluded for publicly talking about it, rather than attempting to cover it all up.

I noticed that a spokesperson for Masterfoods made the point that a lot of vegetarians wouldn't be particularly bothered by it - and that they could afford to lose the support from hardcore ones.

Incidentally, what's a "decent" vegetarian? What makes one vegetarian better than another one? I mean, I know a couple of people who are vegetarians out of simply not liking meat - and who consequently couldn't give a fuck about eating stuff like this.

At the end of the day, it's their choice if they want to include animal products - and if people don't like it, then don't buy the fucking product. Not rocket science, is it?

eh? that's a load of fucking tosh.

surely even you can see the stupidity of suddenly making your food products unsuitable for a large portion of the population for no real reason. aside from anything else it's just terrible pr.

as for your enlightened statement at the end, of course they won't buy it, they're vegetarian and already consciously choose not to buy anything containing animal products.

and i'm pretty sure the definition of a decent vegetarian would be one who calls themselves a vegetarian and actually is one, not eating meat or fish. whereas the people you're talking about just don't eat some meaty products cause they don't like the taste. i bet they eat fish, pate and shit like that don't they? fakers.

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Thanks for ointing that one out.

It has nothing to do with being a strict or "decent" vegetarian. These bars are not vegetarian in the most basic and true definition of the word so anyone who is a vegetarian will refrain from eating them. Eating calves stomach lining is exactly the same in principle as meat. If people do eat them then it is not a true vegetarian diet and they are not truly vegetarian, end of.

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To be honest, if they can afford to piss off vegetarians, then fair play to them. In fact, they deserve to be appaluded for publicly talking about it, rather than attempting to cover it all up.

I noticed that a spokesperson for Masterfoods made the point that a lot of vegetarians wouldn't be particularly bothered by it - and that they could afford to lose the support from hardcore ones.

Incidentally, what's a "decent" vegetarian? What makes one vegetarian better than another one? I mean, I know a couple of people who are vegetarians out of simply not liking meat - and who consequently couldn't give a fuck about eating stuff like this.

At the end of the day, it's their choice if they want to include animal products - and if people don't like it, then don't buy the fucking product. Not rocket science, is it?

Jesus you speak some amount of shit.

As a person that claims to know a shit-load about business, you think a wise business move would be to piss off vegetarians, providing you can afford it? What a cock.

And if they don't like meat, yet eat this; which contains the lining of a calfs stomach. Not a cow, so its not a by-product of producing beef, it has to be from a calf, so baby cows are slaughtered purely to get their stomach lining, then they simply aren't a vegetarian.

Thats like saying "I'm a vegetraian, except for white meat."

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I imagine the baby cows are slaughtered for veal, and the stomach lining is one of the by products of this.

The calves are largely byproducts of the dairy industry now. Which produces a steady supply of them in order to keep the milk flowing. Some will come from veal certainly but overall, the veal market has been contracting fast in the last few years. Even in France, Belgium & Germany - its traditional heartland.

For Masterfoods/Mars, instead of actively deciding to use meat-based products, it is probably much more to do with them switching to the general international market for their supplies & no longer being able to say with certainty that their ingredients are fully meat-free. Because of this, personally I'd be more likley to avoid them because they no longer seem to care where their ingredients come from & have introduced a policy of ethical questionability.

As for vegetarianism & meat-byproduct consumption - you open-up a very big can of worms there as many industrial-catering processes do indeed use things like enzymes that can often be derived from slaughterhouse waste. However, they are usually classed as "production aids" & don't have to be declared as ingredients in many countries, or are applied to the raw materials at source & are covered by the "not knowingly used" line. IME, most vegetarians with any depth to their commitment have wrestled with this one & accept it's going to be too difficult/impinge too much on their lifestyles to actually eliminate absolutely everything that is made from dead animals but still try to do the best they can.

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The calves are largely byproducts of the dairy industry now. Which produces a steady supply of them in order to keep the milk flowing.

Don't those calves then get exported or slaughtered for veal? It's my (limited) understanding that dairy farms produce more female calves than they can turn into dairy cows and they have little use for the bull calves, so they use them for veal instead.

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Who eats that shit anyway apart from kids and fat people? I would have thought any "decent vegetarian" as you put it would be enlightened enough about their diet not to eat such filth in the first place.
Its not like I'm feasting on them. But every now and then, like when at Capt Toms for a jam, I like a chocolate bar.
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This makes no difference to me as I usually celebrate a good mars bar by slaughtering a baby cow anyway.

In all seriousness though, people seem to be saying its such a terrible business decision to alienate such a large potential market but I think it's pretty safe to say that before switching just about all their products over to this method of production the people at Masterfoods probably crunched the numbers and worked out they could make more profit this way.

eg: Large number of customers does not always equal larger profit. If you cut down the price of production enough it will offset any drop in units sold.

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For Masterfoods/Mars, instead of actively deciding to use meat-based products, it is probably much more to do with them switching to the general international market for their supplies & no longer being able to say with certainty that their ingredients are fully meat-free. Because of this, personally I'd be more likley to avoid them because they no longer seem to care where their ingredients come from & have introduced a policy of ethical questionability.

This is probably true. Only the Mars and Snickers actually made in the U.K. (Indicated by first serial code letter "U") are suitable are veg at the moment anyway as the continental manufacturing plants have been using calves for their whey for a while apparently. That puts Mini + funsize mars out anyway, so it's not all that surprising that they've moved to the same practises here.

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Don't those calves then get exported or slaughtered for veal?

Not really anymore. Due to the activities of campaigners & differences in production methods that relegated UK veal to 3rd-rate (& expensive) status in Europe, exports were on the skids long before the export ban was imposed when the BSE-scare hit in 93/94 (?)

Even since the phased re-start of exports in 1999, till last year when restrictions were lifted completely, the amount of veal/calves exported remained very stable - at next to nothing.

In the meantime, per capita veal consumption in Europe had fallen from somewhere around 10kg per annum in the late 80s, to about 2.3kg in 2005 (only Hungary bucked the trend significantly) whilst calf production remained stable at 12-15% of the overall meat market, because of dairy-market requirements.

So we don't really have much of a market to export to anymore.

However, there is some suggestion that the bird-flu scare last year caused a rise in veal consumption in France & Italy as folk switched away from chicken but I've yet to see that quantified & it may not be sustained now bird flu is off the headlines.

Fuck, I work with too many farmer-types these days! :O :D

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