Vegan labelling: Testing to validate claims

13 December 2022. By FACTS in Vegan & Plant-based

Consumer protection is the overarching aim of all regulations and food safety standards in the food industry. Considering past incidents in the news and media related to vegan products, it’s clear a compromised vegan claim could result in major harm to consumers, damage to your reputation, and significant financial losses.

With FACTS vegan screens, you can ensure the integrity of your vegan products and protect both your consumers and your brand.

Introduction

The plant-based industry is set to expand even more in the coming years, providing a huge opportunity for innovation in plant-based products.

However, this growing movement – and especially the demand for vegan products – has highlighted some unique and multifactorial challenges to ensuring product authenticity and integrity.

Why is vegan claim integrity important?

Keeping claims honest and meeting consumer expectations is an important aspect of food integrity.

Consumers’ expectations of vegan claims are likely to vary based on their individual beliefs and lifestyle choices, which may include dietary, environmental and ethical considerations.

Typically, a vegan claim suggests to a consumer that the product contains no ingredients and additives that have animal origins, and that it has been produced in a manner that supports animal welfare and excludes animal-derived processing aids.

Therefore, the presence of undeclared animal compounds in a vegan product, due either to unintentional addition (cross-contamination or hidden ingredients) or intentional addition (e.g. adulteration or mislabelling) may threaten vegan claim integrity. This raises serious ethical concerns for consumers, as well as posing a potential food safety risk (for example, undeclared allergens are a risk to allergic consumers, who may assume that ‘vegan’ means ‘free from animal-derived allergens’).

To ensure innovation and product success, it is essential to consider the final consumer’s expectations of vegan products.

Other factors driving vegan claim integrity and testing

It is not currently mandated by most labelling regulations that products must be tested to validate vegan claims. However, testing is a tool widely used by industry to validate and substantiate other labelling claims, such as ‘free from egg’, or nutrient content claims.

In addition, consumer protection and food-related acts and regulations typically prohibit direct or indirect marketing of products that implies false, misleading or deceptive representation.

Certain Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) -certified food safety schemes have specific standards or requirements – including testing requirements – for plant-based products, such as the BRCS Plant-based Global Standard.

As plant-based products surge to the top of food-trend lists, international and local vegan certifying organisations are becoming more prominent. In some cases, analytical testing is required as part of their evaluation process for approving a final product carrying their vegan symbol.

Since veganism goes beyond being a diet, and is also seen as a philosophy or lifestyle, consumers are paying more attention to product authenticity. For a food business, this requires greater emphasis on consumer assurance. Furthermore, it has been noted that retailers may also request testing as part of their supplier assurance or onboarding programmes.

FACTS vegan screens: testing to validate vegan claims

It is imperative to select a relevant and suitable test method to meet testing objectives.

For validating vegan claims, current commercial test methods such as DNA-based species-identification techniques have shown potential shortfalls and limitations.

When there are changes in consumer trends, science, the environment or technology, new routine commercial test methods are usually introduced to meet industry requirements.

FACTS were first to market in developing vegan screens for food and wine in order to provide the industry with a sensitive, accurate and appropriate testing solution.

These screens serve as a comprehensive, inclusive and cost-effective approach to validating a vegan claim and confirming product integrity – consequently ensuring consumer protection and contributing to brand success.

Other articles and resources you may be interested in:
Vegan diets: Breaking down plant-based diets
Vegan labelling: Requirements & limitations
FACTS vegan screens by Targeted Proteomics (by-LC-MSMS)
Distinguishing between plant-based diets
Time to de‘fine’ vegan wine
FACTS Testing Catalogue