The SA Vegan Society's New Consumer Initiative

We at the Vegan Society are getting really frustrated with a new wave of self regulation in the retail and manufacturing sector. People are labelling things as vegan who have no idea about what our requirements are.

Having a non-vegan product is one thing, but labelling it as vegan is totally unacceptable! Not just out of consideration for our requirements as vegans but in accordance with the Department of Health’s food labelling and Advertising Standards.

The point of labelling something as ‘vegan’ (or Halal or Kosher for that matter) is that it is a mark of trust and assurance for the consumer, when we see ‘vegan’ we are supposed to be able to purchase that product without scanning the ingredients and decrypting the E-numbers. So when one product is through mistake or ignorance, incorrectly labelled as vegan, the entire system becomes pointless.

The SA Vegan Society is launching our new initiative to make companies take our consumer rights as vegans seriously!

We would like you to let us know every time you find a product labelled vegan that isn’t, and we will bring each of these mistakes to the attention of the company and make them realise that our requirements are as important as any other consumer and that we are not going to take this state of affairs anymore.

If you would like to bring inaccurate labelling to our attention, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the full name of the product, the barcode and where you saw it, and we will take it further for you.

It’s just one of the ways the SA Vegan Society is working to make being vegan in South Africa easier, and more respected.