Inghams drops the milk

Food giant Inghams has bowed to public pressure and will remove dairy products from one of its products.

Let’s Eat, which is owned and operated by Inghams Group New
Zealand, sells a variety of vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes and one is
called Golden Nuggets.

The company has come into criticism because their nuggets
are promoted as plant based, but contain milk.

“Your products are misleading. You can’t call something
plant based when it contains breast milk from a cow… That’s not from a plant,”
wrote Instagram user, William Dragicevic.

Another simply said, “These have f@#$ing milk in them.”

Inghams was approached for comment by the Waikato
Independent and revealed it would make good on the issue.

“Let’s Eat have taken on board feedback from consumers and
have reviewed the ingredients in the nuggets. These will be relaunched in 2022
free of dairy products,” a spokesperson said.

Ironically, the Commerce Commission had earlier rejected a
complaint about the labelling made by the Vegan Society of Aotearoa

“The Society had written to the company to share our
members concerns with them, so we are delighted to hear that they have heard
and responded in the best way possible. Now more people can enjoy their
products so it’s a win-win situation for Let’s Eat,” said spokesperson, Claire
Insley.

But the society plans to take issue with the failure of
their complaint. The Commission ruled it was not clear that the Lets Eat Group
had breached the Fair-Trading Act.

The Society wants legal definitions created for products
labelled as plant-based, vegan, or vegetarian.

“We discussed this at our board meeting, and all agreed
that we wanted plant based to mean no animal products. However, getting
legislative bodies to agree is another matter altogether.

“As it stands, we must continue to read labels carefully,”
Insley said.