#nofilter blog#nofilter: Vegan options under the lens
29.12.2016

#nofilter: Vegan options under the lens

“Are there any vegan products in Alko’s assortment? If yes, why don’t they make it easier to find them?”

The ingredients for beverages are of course mostly vegetal with the exception of products that contain milk and some products where an animal ingredient has been used as a spice. In the process of clarification of wine animal substances can be used to produce sediment and any impurities can be removed with the sediment. However, the most common wine clarification method is filtration where no specific substance is used. The issue in terms of Alko’s product information is that in the different batches or vintages of drinks’ production process these substances can be switched to others but updated batch-specific information unfortunately cannot be accumulated in our product database.

Current EU legislation does not create obligation for alcohol drink producers to mark products with complete ingredient declarations. Vegan products also do not have a standard monitored certification – like organic – but the information is based on producers’ own declarations. As the correctness of product information is a must for Alko we have not been able to tag vegan products, those do not have a handy symbol attached to the shelf nor a search term in our web shop. We are currently looking for a solution for this as our aim is to be able to give equally high quality service to all our customers.

The website of the Finnish vegan association contains information about vegan products and also links to Finnish web pages, maintained by a private individual, listing vegan wines, beers and ciders.

You can join the #nofilter discussion in English in our Twitter channel @Alko_Sustain using hashtags #Alkochallenge #transparency.

#nofilter

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