Vegetarian Diet Rules

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How you can help improving Vegetarian support in Open Food Facts

• Annotate Vegan and Vegetarian logos using Hunger Games
• Improve and translate our ingredient taxonomies if you spot a misdetection. English, French… already have good support, but many languages don't.

Vegetarian associations we can reach to, by country

France

• insert details

Vegetarian Diet Rules in detail

The European Vegetarian Society has listed detailed rules, which must be complied to in order to obtain the label. These are reproduced below:

The following products are excluded from the use of the V-Label:

• Animal flesh (meat, fowl, fish, seafood).
• Ingredients derived from meat or bone-products (in soups, sauces or other preparations)
• Animal fats (except milk fat), frying fat or margarine containing fish-oil or similar products in cakes, pies, pasta, for frying or baking, for greasing baking-traws, tins, or any other manipulation.
• Gelatine, aspic, gelling agents of animal origin.
• Royal Jelly.
• Other products containing ingredients originating from slaughterhouse by-products.
• Battery eggs.

Specific ingredients:

• Cheese - Is usually manufactured with traditional rennet made with enzymes from calves’ stomaches and is therefore not acceptable, whereas vegetarian cheeses manufactured with enzymes of vegetable origin or micro-organisms are acceptable.
• Fats & Oils - need to be of vegetable origin. Margarine needs to be checked. It may contain ingredients which may be derived from animal fat, vitamins A and E which may be stabilised with gelatine, or vitamin D, which may come from lanolin of slaughtered sheep – these ingredients are not acceptable.
• Honey - Is acceptable. But not acceptable for vegan products.
• Fruit Juices, Alcoholic beverages, vinegar - Need to be chequed. They may have been clarified with gelatine, egg-white (usually battery), isinglass (swim-bladders of sturgeon fish) or chitin (crushed lobster or crab shells) – not acceptable.
• Whey - Should only be used if derived from a vegetarian cheese making process which included microbial or plantbased rennet.
• Worcestershire Sauce Often contains anchovies, needs to be checked.

Additives

Need to be checked with regard to their possible animal origin.

And products with genetically modified ingredients are prohibited, too.