Masterfoods: Not evil, merely stupid

[matgb]

Hmm, good news for a change, Masterfoods no longer evil:

Mars said it became "very clear, very quickly" that it had made a mistake.

Merely very very stupid. Was going to post about the sheer idiocy when mooism first posted on the 8th (note, that was 6 days before the BBC caught up), but things got lost in the shuffle. They were using the excuse that "only strict vegetarians" would be affected, and in a way, they'd be right. When I eat out, I don't tend to worry whether the cheese is made using rennet, I'm not that strict. But if a company does something blitheringly stupid, and says that it shouldn't bother me at all?

Worse, for them, it would've meant that many of my non-vegetarian friends and family would have stopped buying their products; why buy Masterfoods when Cadbury do something just as good? Stupid stupid company decision. Still, while I'll try to stick to Green and Blacks when I can afford it, and Cadbury when I can't, I can still buy Masterfoods now, they're idiots, but they're not
evil like Nestlé. Ah, informed consumers making choices within an active market, and forcing companies to change. You can see why so many capitalists are anti-market at heart, right?

The only problem of course is that some of the statistics used to claim how many vegetarians there are in the country are likely very very wrong. Why? Because even smart people are stupid:

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian - although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken.

Guys? Vegetarians don't eat fish, let alone chicken. So as virtually every survey of the nature relies on self reporting, and approx 1/3rd of self-described vegetarians are pescetarians at best, the market impact might be smaller than it should be. People assuming I can eat fish despite being vegetarian is probably one of my biggest pet-hates, and it isn't helped by the ignorance of some who self-describe wrongly. It's a bit like self-described Christians who don't go to church; they may quack like a duck, but they sure as hell don't walk like a duck.

Oh, it's National Vegetarian Week as of tomorrow, so expect dodgy media coverage, false assumptions and some of my more idiotic ethical eaters to be a bit too assertive in various places, sorry about that.

Comments

[matgb]

??? Why for a week, are you just joining in for the hell of it or something?

Plus, £13? That's crazy good. Marie not working or something?

*ducks, hides, runs a bit more*

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

She rang in sick :P

Why for a week, are you just joining in for the hell of it or something?

Yes, LOL. And I want to see if I can do it.

It's not that I don't like veggie food, and I don't eat meat when you're here because it's easier to cook us both the same... but I like meat too. I am, at least, a moderately ETHICAL meat eater - the only meat dish I will eat at work is the sausages because they are local/organic/fluffy sausages.

[matgb]

Fair enough, hope she's OK.

I think the ethics of it are important, my main objection to meat production is factory farming; I've got a huge amount of time for traditional and organic farmers who look after their animals properly.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. My objection is to factory farming as well. Thus I buy organic milk and eggs as well as meat (because they have controls for animal welfare which have to be applied before the stuff can be called organic).

I'll happily eat pig's trotters and other stuff which people think are gross, as long as they are from well looked-after animals...

But yes, am going to try veggieness for a week. I mean, I did it for seven years once; it can't be that hard...