Thank god for the vegetarians

Unlike some other parts of the world, vegetarianism is a widely acknowledged group of herbivors that have consideral impact on the way businesses run. For example, in restraunts it's an unspoken rule that there must be a vegetarian menu. Without one, the restraunt might as well be loosing a big number of their vegetarian customers to other restraunts. Even in food products in supermarkets manufacturers will normaly use plant based ingredients unless nessesaray. This is to ensure that the products are suitable for the vegetarian community that is rapidly growing. The number of vegetarians in Germany, Italy and the UK alone already amounts to almost 18 million people, equal to the population of Australia. This means if a company decides to "un-vegetrainize" their products, they would have to consider the risk of loosing 18 million customers or a situation that as if Australia has totaly band their products.

However this was not the case for Masterfoods, the producer of famus chocolate products such as Mars, Snickers and Twix. In a BBC report on 14th May 2007 said, Masterfoods have anounced that their products have started to use an animal based ingredient, "rennet". This caused rage among members of the vegetarian society which refered to the act as "incomprehensible" and it was a step backwards.

"Rennet" is a chemical sourced from calves' stomachs, is used in the production of whey.

This will mean any of their products that has a expiry date after 1st of october will not be suitable for vegeterians.

However, Masterfoods did not consider the 53 million muslims living in Europe that up till now has been consumers of their products. The step to use "rennet" in the products means that they are loosing 53 million of their potential customers, unless the "Rennet" is acquired through a halal process.

So what does this mean to me? Well, its true that muslims and vegetarians have different views and opinion in terms of what to eat and what not to eat. Vegetarians are usualy vegetarians because(among other things) they are against cruelty to animals that is always related to commercial meat production but for me as a non-vegetarian, i believe that our body was naturaly created by god to consume meat and resorting to the total rejection of the consumption of meat for the reason stated above is and easy way out. Instead we should fight for a laws and systems that treats animals in a more humaine way. We can debate all day long about this topic but i choose not to because in the end, nobody wins.

What ever the believes of people, i dont think it's an excuse for us to deny the rights of other parties. I believe that there should be a sence of mutual respect, especialy among minority (such as in this case) vegetarians in Europe. Because believe it or not without the vegetarians(which has a stronger voice in europe), it would also be a big problem for the muslims to consume most of the products in the european market now. Thank god for the vegetarians.

I believe there is no such thing as a race or a certian group of people in this world that is better than the other. We all complement the other. Just like a girl is the other half of the man, a race is a part of the other races and only by working together we can achieve a (close to) perfect world. Towards that, we should be focusing more on the mutual interest of everybody instead of focusing on the differences and believe me, its is way more beneficial that you can imagine.