Vegan products are hot and more and more companies are happy to show them off. Also Hema. Yet there is on social media fuss originated because Hema uses the term ‘vegan’ on the packaging of a product containing chicken meat. A kind of vegan washingit is said.
Hema sells three types of hot dog packages: chicken, pork and vegan. Hema indicates on the packaging which products it contains. In the chicken variant, these are a vegan sandwich, a chicken sausage and a sauce that is vegan. “So they don’t sell it as a completely vegan product,” says Emile Dingemans, president of the Dutch Vegan Association.
The vegan version is made from vegetables, explains a Hema spokesperson. “But the pragmatic solution was chosen at the time to keep the packaging of the three variants as much as possible the same, including texts on it.”
Dingemans is disturbed by the way the product is sold. I call it a form of vegan washing. It is indicated that all kinds of parts of a product are vegan, while the product is not vegan at all. Ultimately, the term is then simply used to sell something that is not vegan.”
Such a chicken sausage, which is the issue in this case, is of course not vegan, the Hema spokesperson also acknowledges. “The sum is that in the end you don’t have anything vegan at all, so that’s just not a convenient choice. We did it with the best of intentions, but will correct it as soon as possible.”
The sum is that in the end you don’t have anything vegan at all, so that’s just not so handy
Abuse of the term vegan
Veganism is an ethical belief, says Dingemans. ,,If you then put an animal product in something and at the same time make a nice decoration with the term ‘vegan’, it just doesn’t make any sense anymore. You then use a moral conviction for a part of your product.”
“I think mustard sauce is almost always vegan and if you buy a hot dog bun in the supermarket, it rarely contains milk,” notes Dingemans. “So in that respect it is not very special that the products at Hema are vegan. But if they would use the word plant-based, I could agree a little better.”
Dingemans calls on producers to stop vegan washing. ,,I think it is clear in itself that the product is not completely vegan, so in that sense you understand what you are buying. I don’t think there are many vegans who will make a mistake in that, provided they read well of course. But I am more concerned about the fact that the term is simply misused for marketing purposes.”
According to the Hema spokesperson, the fuss that has arisen is understandable. “We are also pleased that this has come to us and we have immediately acted on it, because we realize that this needs to be adjusted.”
It is not yet clear when the changes will actually be implemented. ,,That depends on the stocks and the packaging material that is still available at the moment. Of course we are not going to throw all that away, that is not smart either. So it could take a few weeks, but also a few months, I don’t know exactly.”
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