By Sarah Kaltsounis

Vegetarians and vegans quickly become accustomed to dealing with exasperated fellow shoppers whenever we visit the grocery store. We tend to block the aisles as we pore over food labels to see whether an item is okay for us to eat: “Is there chicken broth in this soup? How about the Caesar salad dressing; any anchovies hiding in there? Does this dessert contain gelatin?” Often we just give up and put the item back on the shelf rather than risk violating the dietary rules we have adopted for ethical, religious, health and/or environmental reasons.

In the past few years, however, vegetarians have started to demand better food labeling. In 1999, a group of law students at George Washington University formed the Vegetarian Legal Action Network or VLAN after becoming concerned that fast-food restaurants and food manufacturers were including animal byproducts in unexpected places by labeling them with the innocuous-sounding category of “natural flavors.”

In particular, the students’ focus turned to McDonald’s, which announced in 1990 that it would start cooking its french fries in vegetable oil instead of beef tallow in response to customer concerns about cholesterol. The Golden Arches represented that its fries were among the menu items that were safe for vegetarians to eat, but McDonald’s continued to pre-cook the fries in “natural flavoring” that contained beef extract.

VLAN sought assistance from Seattle attorney Harish Bharti, who brought a class action on behalf of vegetarian consumers alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act. In a much-celebrated victory, McDonald’s settled the case by agreeing to issue a public apology, to create a dietary practices/vegetarian advisory panel and to donate $10 million to various vegetarian groups.

Relying on the goodwill of other restaurants to voluntarily disclose their ingredients can only take vegetarians so far because the Food and Drug Administration does not require detailed disclosures that notify customers about potential traces of meat. The FDA’s “specific animal food labeling requirements” permit food producers to use the term “natural flavor” to include any flavoring extract derived from a broad variety of sources such as spices, nuts, fruits and vegetables, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs and dairy products.1

In 1999, VLAN submitted a citizen petition to the FDA and launched a letter-writing campaign asking the FDA to require producers to list the specific sources of any natural flavoring so that vegetarians and people with food allergies will know what they are eating. The group’s efforts did eventually bring some publicity to the issue, and in 2003 several U.S. representatives, including vegan congressman Dennis Kucinich, proposed H.R. 467, the Food Ingredient Right to Know Act, which would have amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to require foods containing spices, flavoring or coloring derived from animal products (including insects)2 or known allergens to bear labels that describe their sources.

Congress ultimately passed the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004,3 which requires labels to list common allergens such as milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans. Unfortunately, vegetarians and vegans are still left unprotected by this new act because it does not mandate disclosure of non-allergenic meat-based products.

And so the push for vegetarian-friendly labels appears to have fizzled out a bit, at least for now. Most vegetarians and vegans who are politically active are busy dealing with other food-related issues at the moment, like protecting animal rights, supporting organic farming, fighting for accurate labeling of genetically modified and irradiated produce or ensuring that federal and state agencies are serving nutritionally adequate veggie meals in our schools and prisons.

Until our fledgling legal advocacy groups hit the news again with a new case or new proposed legislation, you can find us at the grocery store sorting through the labels and trying to figure out what’s in our food.4

1 21 C.F.R. ¤ 101.22(a)(3) and (h).

2 Carmine, a red coloring agent found in items such as Popsicles, colored pasta and bottled juice, is made from cochineal beetles.

3 Pub. L. No. 108-282.