ScottChegg, you highlight the main problem. Animal products are concealed in so many things that it's impossible to be totally vegan. I do my best with the knowledge I have and every day I learn something new to avoid.
"trace amounts" is a pretty broad term though, and has been used to describe all sorts of things.
'Vegan' to STWer is like 'Muslim' to Sun reader? Discuss...
Presumably vegans use petrol and crude oil based products (genuine question by the way as I'm not one)?
Presumably vegans use petrol and crude oil based products (genuine question by the way as I'm not one)?
Most vegans I know choose to be vegan because they don't wish to exploit animals and/or believe that their diet is mostly or entirely healthier than the typical meat-eating one. They don't wish to exploit animals for a number of reasons, key reasons being farming (intensive or otherwise) and slaughter. So this ethical stance/preference effectively rules out buying/eating flesh, dairy or wearing leather etc. I'm sure some tiny proportion of vegans out there (the more religious ones?) treat any animal by-product as some kind of kryptonite - yet surely lifeforms that died billions years ago and became a chemical product is probably not one of them. Although they probably live in an oxygen tent in fear of inhaling micro-organisms and tiny insects. Wait ... they don't??? Gah the flaky hypocrites I want my money back.
[meathead revenge] I wish they'd make petrol out of fresh baby pigs then I could get my own back on stupid Muslims and vegans by driving a muscle car up and down outside of their houses!! Moohaha ha. Ha. [/meathead revenge]
Page 2 and no one has mentioned bacon yet. Standards are slipping.
Do vegans suffer from poor eyesight too?dazh - Member
Page 2 and no one has mentioned bacon yet. Standards are slipping.
Ah spotted it! That's a relief, I thought people might be growing up a bit. My eyesight is shite though, more due to age than diet sadly.
Speaking for myself of course, while animals are obviously not killed to make fivers (or Haribo or Durex etc..), the sale of the 'by-products' only make an industry I refuse to support more profitable, so I will avoid those too.
It's also a bit of a cop-out to resign onesself to using these products just because that's how it is. Many tyres (car and bike) use animal derived stearic acid in their manufacture. Some don't, however, and after a bit of emailing around there's a list of manufacturers who have confirmed they don't use it*. I've noticed an increasing number of breweries putting the vegan society stamp on their products too.
* In the unlikely event of anyone being interested, they are Bontrager, DMR, Kenda, Maxxis, Michelin, No Tubes, Panaracer, Schwalbe, Specialized, Vittoria, Vredestein
"trace amounts" is a pretty broad term though, and has been used to describe all sorts of things.
I've just found this (on the Internet so it must be true):
[i]The note is polyproylene (which is made from petroleum) but usually has stearates added as a moulding lubricant which can be derived from animal products at the [b]100 parts per million[/b] level. If you ask a supplier they will not deny that they use animal drived stearates just in case they ever need to and of course they may use it on a regular basis.
[/i]
So that's, what, 0.01% of the banknote?
More GCSE maths,
The new fiver is 125mm x 65mm, or 8125mm^2.
100 ppm of 8125m^2 gives you 0.8125. So if you divided up all the constituent parts, that gives you a surface area of animal-based lubricant of 0.8125mm^2. Assuming it all stays in the banknote, I imagine a percentage of it will remain with whatever it's lubricating against.
I can feel a business venture coming on cleaning up these fivers and selling them on to concerned vegans (or vegetarians wanting to eat them 😀 ) at a slight markup.
Money laundering, as it were.. 😆
If you ask a supplier they will not deny that they use animal drived stearates
Yeah, but they do deny it. See my post above re. tyres.
The Maths!Tallow is rendered cow or mutton fat, but for the sake of argument let's go with cows here.
How much do cows weigh? Between 1,100kg for a male (bull) and 720kg for a female. So, on average, a cow weighs 910kg.
The body fat content of an average cow is 25 percent. Therefore, the amount of fat in an average cow's body is 227.5kg.
How many kilograms of this fat is contained in offcuts you could use to make tallow? About 40kg, according to a man at the James Elliott butcher in Islington.
How much tallow is used in one note, according to the Bank of England? "A trace", which chemically means less than 100 parts per million, or 0.01 percent. A polymer consultant I called confirmed that the tallow present in a given polymer would be a fraction of a single percentage.
New £5 notes weigh 0.7g, therefore there is roughly 0.00007 g of tallow present in one £5 note.
How many fivers are in circulation now, and therefore will be around by May of 2017, when all the old paper ones have been phased out? 329 million notes.
To work out how much tallow will be used in total in all of these fivers, we need to multiply 0.00007g by 329 million, which gives us 23,030g, or 23kg.
And if you get about 40kg of tallow-worthy fat from the average cow, how many cows would you need to make every single £5 note in circulation?
JUST OVER HALF OF ONE COW
Panic over, I can go back to eating fivers now.
Yay!
Does this mean we won't be strapping people to the mouths of cannon before discharging them?
Its made the BBC News, seems there is going to be a solution to this "problem"
The solution is to use Scottish banknotes as they are already vegan friendly
It's not just Vegans. If there is beef or pork used it could be offensive to both Hindu and Muslims.
Just because you might have a viewpoint (or no view on a subject) why should someone with strong convictions suffer?
Opportunity for schadenfreude?
You're right, of course. It was a bit short-sighted of them.
Just because you might have a viewpoint (or no view on a subject) why should someone with strong convictions suffer?
If you have stupid convictions then it's entirely your problem.
[i]The solution is to use Scottish banknotes as they are already vegan friendly [/i]
*ahem*
[img] 
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Oh the ironyIf you have stupid convictions then it's entirely your problem.
😆
Oh the irony
Eh? afaik I'm conviction free.
What about the conviction that stupid convictions are stupid?
This place has become a parody of itself. It's like a competition to see who is the most self righteous arse. The irony being that there can be no winner.
It's the taking part that counts. 😉
What about the conviction that stupid convictions are stupid
Ah, I see. I don't believe religion is stupid. I know it is.
Equivalent to a maximum of 0.003% per banknote. Won't there likely be more animal fat on a note as a result of general circulation? Think of all the chippies/McDonalds/butchers etc these will get passed around. Typical over reaction.
Over reaction, yes, but typical of what?
but typical of what?
This day and age.
why is it an over reaction to ask them to not put meat in money?Typical over reaction.
I can easily understand why a meat eater won't care but it must be equally obvious why those who dont use or eat meat do object.
Who exactly is over reacting here?
There is probably as much meat in the vegetables that you eat.
are you planning on addressing the point i made or do you just wish to speculate widely on the meat content of veg and the contamination of notes whilst telling us others are over reacting?
Who exactly is over reacting here?
Looks like you are.
Then there's the problem of insects in things.
https://projects.ncsu.edu/cals/course/ent425/text18/food.html
Oh the ironyLooks like you are.
So a cafe is refusing to take them. Can I assume that there is no trace of animal products in anything they have in their cafe? Are you allowed to eat there (or work there) if you're wearing leather shoes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-38184599
My only hope is that all this fuss leads people to think a little more about what things are made of and make better informed ethical choices.
Unfortunately, it appears to be following the usual media fuelled public outrage trajectory of "this thing is bad so we hate it", regardless of how many things around us are as bad or even worse.
As has been pointed out already on this thread, so many products use tallow that we are surrounded by but are oblivious to.
My main ethical reason for pursuing a vegan lifestyle is that, in the current system, eating meat and using animal-based products is responsible for so much harm, not just to the animals involved but to the wider environment. There are situations in my life where I have to make choices between using an animal product or another, non-animal based product whose environmental impact may be greater, but this is very much my choice.
As usual, thousands are up in arms over the use of 1.5 cows to make millions of bank notes, but, compared to the daily horrors of the meat industry, ever increasing climate change and deforestation, a £5 note is irrelevant. Imagine if the media spent as much time talking about those issues as they've spent talking about fivers.
I'm not in the business of telling others how to go about their business but I hope that my choices may inspire others to reduce or remove animal products in their lives. I'm not sure anyone's being inspired by a bunch of people crying into their lentils* about trace elements of tallow in £5 notes.
* I like lentils, I eat them all the time.
Fin, that's fine but your ethical choices are not the same as others. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian so can't get excited about animal products being used elsewhere. I respect others opinions and lifestyles there are limits and I don't appreciate being lectured to by others pushing their own personal morals and issues onto me. I have strong opinions on a great many subjects, but also realise that the world cannot operate in an uncompromising way in accordance with my views and opinions.
There are many causes of deforestation and actually the demand for palm oil and Soya beans is the biggest cause of deforestation.
If we were to take into account every objection people might have about the new fivers then it would be impossible to manufacture them from anything. In the global world we live you can't be uncompromising on anything. Everyone has to have a bit of room for give and take. Even/especially Vegans.
Now that contactless and Apple Pay is becoming more widespread I actually now rarely use cash at all. Often i'll go out without anything other than my phone. Maybe that is the solution.
Wobbliscott, did you read my post, or did you stop at me being a vegan, because we're saying the same thing. Yes, palm oil is bad and I avoid it. About 85% of soya is grown to feed cattle, so we can eat them and drink their milk, hence I don't eat them or drink their milk.
My only hope is that all this fuss leads people to think a little more about what things are made of and make better informed ethical choices.I'm not in the business of telling others how to go about their business but I hope that my choices may inspire others to reduce or remove animal products in their lives. I'm not sure anyone's being inspired by a bunch of people crying into their lentils* about trace elements of tallow in £5 notes.
This, absolutely.
As you say it's often a choice between an animal product or something more harmful (more than likely a product of the petrochemical industry). I know which I would prefer. That said, how far is too far? It's all well and good talking ideals but unless we all go back to subsistence living a lot of things would vanish from our lives. It's about making an educated choice and making that choice the best it can be (in getting to that final outcome). Animal welfare is a very low hanging fruit IMO.
If we did go back to subsistence living would it be easier or harder to then be vegan? I mean small holdings where 100% of the animal would be used with the tallow making candles/soap, the skin being used for leathers and the dung used as fertiliser would be then way it was done before.
I understand the objections but governments make choices based on the majority and the rest of us have to accept it. I wonder if the formulation is any different to the one used to make the Australian plastic money. They have had that stuff for years now
Internet tells me that all plastic money seems to have a single source for the raw material so Australia and Canada have the same issue, it just seems to not cause such a fuss despite the large amount of vegans especially in oz..
I respect others opinions and lifestyles there are limits and I don't appreciate being lectured to by others pushing their own personal morals and issues onto me.
Isn't that what you're doing, by pushing the use of animal products onto vegans?
