GM or Veggie - the chocoholic dilemma
Vegetarians who have learned to live without roast beef dinners and bacon sandwiches were yesterday forced to make another major sacrifice: chocolate.
It came after the makers of Britain's most popular chocolate bars, including Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Milky Ways, admitted that they now contain an ingredient derived from a cow's stomach.
This month, Masterfoods began using animal rennet to produce the whey needed for its products, rather than a vegetarian alternative. Rennet is extracted from the stomach-lining of slaughtered newborn calves, and is used in traditional cheese production in central Europe. In Britain a microbial alternative made from mould is used.
That would be the rennet produced by GM altered yeast then. The Veggies don't accept GM foods but made an exception for this one. Not for any scientific reason but because it saved cuddly calves. My guess is that Mars haven't dropped using GM Yeast but are just having to buy whey from Europe due to the contraction of the British Dairy Industry, and they can't afford to be picky over how the Europeans produce the whey.