Comments on: The Fear Babe, Part 6: Castoreum

By: unethical_vegan

unethical_vegan — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 23:39:30 +0000

I only bothered to look this up because I sometimes use trivial contaminants to challenge vegan purity obsession. I’m a long-term supporter of non-fear-based veganism and other forms of vegan apostasy.

By: skepticalvegan

skepticalvegan — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:58:43 +0000

It is up to those claiming use of castoreum as a reason to avoid a certain food or category of food to demonstrate the actual presence of castoreum in a particular product from a particular manufacturer, not merely show that it *can* be used in this or that product. Around 300 pounds were used in a year, I’m pretty sure the perfume industry along with the Swedish snaps industry can easily account for that. If people are gonna say that vanilla flavored foods have beaver butt in em then they need to specify.

By: unethical_vegan

unethical_vegan — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:57:21 +0000

The 2005 edition of Fenaroli’s handbook indicates that it is widely used (albeit in minute concentrations).

http://books.google.com/books?id=A8OyTzGGJhYC&pg=PA277&lpg=PA277&dq=castoreum+food+ingredients&source=bl&ots=YeByZKDtcL&sig=hSfcnSCnX9LkQ7PBprj7zFg0004&hl=en&ei=Ca7HTNu5I42-sQOfkqnSDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false

I give far more credence to the above than a silly 5 company survey by the VRG. It’s also quite common for company PR people to be completely clueless about product ingredients. Barnivore’s list, for example, is notoriously flawed.