beforewisdom Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 Faux meats from Taiwan tested to contain meathttp://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=976592&lang=eng_news "Vegan" restaurants in LA found to have meat, dairy, and eggs in the food:http://www.quarrygirl.com/2009/06/28/undercover-investigation-of-la-area-vegan-restaurants/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 wow... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted July 1, 2009 Author Share Posted July 1, 2009 Yes....wow. This impacts *many restaurants in my area. I also have many friends that rely heavily off of this stuff. I'm glad I only used it as treats eating out and that I primarily live off of natural foods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xveganjoshx Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 These places should be retested for clarity and any offenders should be boycotted indefinitely by the vegan community. This is an outrage. I wonder how many times I've eaten "vegan" food that was not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted July 1, 2009 Author Share Posted July 1, 2009 These places should be retested for clarity and any offenders should be boycotted indefinitely by the vegan community. There will not be any places left to retest if they are boycotted. The market for purely vegan faux meats is not that great. I agree, they should be boycotted. They aren't vegan so they are of no use to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcina Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 That's terrible. Especially for those who have dairy or egg allergies. They might eat at these places thinking it's safe from those ingredients when they are in fact not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted July 2, 2009 Author Share Posted July 2, 2009 That's terrible. Especially for those who have dairy or egg allergies. They might eat at these places thinking it's safe from those ingredients when they are in fact not. Exactly. Those sloppy American "vegan" restaurants are one tragedy and lawsuit away from being shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinisterkungfu Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 I posted that article like 3 days ago, but my title was vague and everyone ignored it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sydneyvegan Posted July 3, 2009 Share Posted July 3, 2009 What a great articles,Thanks for posting people.I have often wondered about some of the faux products that you get at Mock Meat places as well as the sauces that are being used.Combine that with a couple of 100% vegan mock meat places here in Sydney that have products that contain milk etc... Even the Vegan Asian grocery store that we have here has a few non vegan products. It's only when you read the label that you see egg whites listed as an ingredient etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscottf Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 Wow, this is very upsetting. Enough for me to have to register and post here... I recently found out where the local veg restaurants in my area get their veggie stuff from, and have been buying some of them myself so i can cook them in a healthier fashion for guests/otherwise meat eaters... Most of the veg food from here (northeast) comes through http://www.vegieworld.com/ - but they're just a distributor of veg products from various places, including Taiwan and Malaysia. They actually import it in bulk, "translate" the ingredients into English and repackage it into smaller bags that bear their names.I was a little suspicious of the nutritional information (I'm a close label watcher), but I never seriously considered that they were cutting their products with meat.. Most of the packages even have "No alcohol, no egg" as writing nearly as large as the name of the product! I even went as far as to research the places that they import from. one of them is ISO9002 certified (Growth well industries in Malaysia). I wonder if "pigs" are on the paperwork there... I really wish the articles which say that "50%" of veg food from overseas is tainted had given names of factories. Does anyone have any more information as to specifics? Even if the tainting is accidental, I don't want to buy from them! I'm writing to all of the importers i know of now asking them what they know about this. I doubt they'll be helpful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelhobson Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 Wow!!! Disturbing at the very least. Have always been suspicious, but that is more than I ever expected. I know it's a very long article, but I recommend reading EVERY word of it, including the two follow-up posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted July 30, 2009 Author Share Posted July 30, 2009 This has happened before( see the links below), so I am not sure if I am going to trust non-American faux meats again. My situation is not that bad. The vegan restaurants in my area also serve traditional soy foods and other "real" foods. I don't go out to eat that often so I can get by with those few dishes on the menu that aren't made with foreign faux meat. When I got to these restaurants I'm going to ask the staff where they get their faux meats from, explain why I am asking, order a non-faux meat dish instead and suggest to them to use American made faux meats. I know it isn't easy to change menus and recipes, but if enough people do this, especially since we are small fringe market, it can happen. I've seen American faux meats that are fairly close to the stuff from Taiwan, but our labels can be trusted and we don't have to pollute the environment by shipping food halfway around the world. A Taiwanese friend told me this came as no surprise to him. The Chinese culture is different from ours. Nobody has the expectation that labels will mean 100% of what they mean. Additionally, it is traditional to mix real meat with faux meats as a means of extending food. That is why this happened the companies that make the faux meats make their primary income making extended meats for omnis. Western vegans are just customers they don't understand who live a world away and who are handled through a chain of distributors. As someone else wrote, the stuff is repackaged for western markets, by people who may not know English all that well, veg*sm less well, may not know what all of the ingredients are and may not care. Taiwan to enact world's strictest law on veggie food labelinghttp://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/272296,taiwan-to-enact-worlds-strictest-law-on-veggie-food-labeling.html Taipei health officials find meat in vegetarian productshttp://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=775314 Taiwan to require detailed labeling of veggie foodhttp://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/news/article_1401598.php/Taiwan_to_require_detailed_labeling_of_veggie_food Lawmaker calls for certification system for vegetarian foodhttp://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/03/13/2003405275 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscottf Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 Your second link there is very interesting. I did not know that some Buddhists considered leeks, onions and garlic to be not vegetarian. I have seen the products mentioned in that article. Fortunately for me, i never had them. I wish they went further and mentioned any others and also company names... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted July 31, 2009 Author Share Posted July 31, 2009 Different sects of Buddhism are so different from each other they are different religions that share the same name. I don't know about Chinese Mahayana Buddhists, but Hindus avoid garlic & onions because they consider them to be aphrodisiacs. They see mushrooms as unclean. It is likely a common Asian folk belief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscottf Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 I see mushrooms as unclean too. They're grown out of composted horse poop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aryan Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 Unbelievable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beforewisdom Posted August 1, 2009 Author Share Posted August 1, 2009 I see mushrooms as unclean too. They're grown out of composted horse poop. Many commercial mushrooms are grown on wood chips and other media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelhobson Posted August 1, 2009 Share Posted August 1, 2009 I see mushrooms as unclean too. They're grown out of composted horse poop. Many commercial mushrooms are grown on wood chips and other media. Depends on the mushroom, your standard white button mushrooms are almost always grown in a manure compost. Shitakes are grown on logs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscottf Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 I see mushrooms as unclean too. They're grown out of composted horse poop. Many commercial mushrooms are grown on wood chips and other media. Depends on the mushroom, your standard white button mushrooms are almost always grown in a manure compost. Shitakes are grown on logs. ....how ironic..... That being said, back on topic -- Does anyone have any names of these tainted companies/products? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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