Pork gelatin in apple juices: Vegan activists help halal consumers in Germany

Pork gelatin is widely used in Germany to clarify apple juice and Muslims are left in the dark in the absence of proper labeling. The activism of another minority group of consumers is helping the halal-conscious.  

Between the aisles in a supermarket in the southern German town of Heilbronn, homemaker and mother of two, Hala Farran, takes her time reading the label on a bar of chocolate she wants to buy her sons. Farran only buys halal and she looks out for what she calls “suspicious ingredients”.

“We check the labels on chocolate, cheese, and confectionery among many other products,” she said. “We stick to what we know is halal, and don’t venture into other unknown products.” On another aisle, Farran will have a hard time determining the halal-ness of fruit juices.

Germany is the largest fruit juice consumer in the European Union (EU), accounting for nearly a quarter of the bloc’s consumption, according to the European Fruit Juice Association. Per capita, Germans drank 33 liters of fruit juices in 2016, which is 33 percent more than Americans and nearly double the Brits, according to the Association for German Fruit Juice Industry (VdF).

While consumers in Germany are unified in their love for apple juice, which is nearly half of the juices they drink, the nation’s juice industry by contrast is fragmented into hundreds of small manufacturers that use traditional production methods. One of these methods is to use pork gelatin as a clarifying agent for apple juice.

PORK GELATIN

The clear golden color of packaged apple juice is not what nature gave us. Raw apple juice comes out brown or green from a blender at home or the huge pressers in a factory. It is cloudy with coarse particles of pulp or sediment that settle at the bottom of containers. The cloudiness is also found in juices of citruses, pears, berries, and cherries.

To make the juice more ‘appealing’ to consumers, manufacturers filter out solid particles and add clarifying agents to remove the cloudiness before stacking the shelves. It is a complicated cosmetic intervention that gives apple juice this clear golden color.

“[The solid particles] coagulate with the gelatin or with plant protein and then become bigger and is then easier for filtration,” Klaus Heitlinger, managing director for the Association for German Fruit Juice Industry (VdF) told Salaam Gateway.

One of those gelatins used by manufacturers is pork gelatin.

In late 2016, Foodwatch, an independent consumer protection organization based in Berlin, contacted 17 apple juice manufacturers and 14 apple spritzer producers based in Germany, whose products make up the entire apple drinks portfolios of three giant German supermarkets: Lidl, Edeka, and Rewe. A third of the 17 apple juice producers wrote back saying they use pork gelatin for clarification, and five of the 14 apple spritzer producers confirmed the same.

Salaam Gateway was shown exchanged correspondences that support the study. The same producers didn’t respond to multiple requests from Salaam Gateway to comment on this story.

“Foodwatch is attacking legally-produced food products. They like to bash the fruit juice industry. We know that,” said Heitlinger, whose organization, VdF, represents 99 percent of juice producers in Germany.

Contrary to Foodwatch’s study, Hetlinger said, “Now we are 100 percent gelatin free.” When asked about the correspondences between the juice manufacturers and Foodwatch, in which many of the companies admitted to using pork gelatin, Hetlinger said, “We don’t have any collected information of how individual companies produce their juices.”

Foodwatch isn’t the only organization to bring to light that many small juice producers use pork gelatin as a clarifying agent. The Federal Nutrition Center and halal certifiers also confirm the fact.

VEGAN, VEGETARIAN ACTIVISM

“Ten years ago, 90 percent of the juice was clarified with pork gelatin. Now it is between 30 percent and 50 percent,” Badr Hawary of Germany-based certifier Halal Europe told Salaam Gateway.

The reduction in the use of pork gelatin in the past decade is a result of the activism of a small but influential vegan consumer base. Germany is home to an estimated 1.3 million vegan and nearly 8 million vegetarian consumers, according to a 2016 survey conducted by market research institute SKOPOS. To cater to this emerging segment, Germany-wide sales of vegan and vegetarian foods doubled between 2010 and 2015 to nearly half a billion euros, according to the federal agency Germany Trade and Invest (GATI).

Under pressure from vegan consumers, in October 2015 juice manufacturers received the green light from the EU commission to use plant protein instead of pork gelatin to clarify juices. “The EU food commission allowed using pea and potato proteins [to clarify the juice],” said Hetlinger.

According to the Association for German Fruit Juice Industry, producers experimented with the new plant-based proteins for a year before they started to use it in the filtration process. “I know that the big [juice producers] put in their purchasing requirements that their concentrated apple juice should be filtered without animal gelatin,” added Hetlinger.

Vegan and vegetarian consumers now demand the government extend its inspection and certification to products that were previously out of its scope, including fruit juice.

The EU has agreed to impose a strict legal definition and labelling for vegan and vegetarian food starting 2019.

HALAL STATUS

“We consider any materials derived from pork as haram and najis (ritually unclean),” Dr. Rachid Fetouaki of Germany-based certifier Halal Control told Salaam Gateway.

Ingredients used in food manufacturing that are derived from pigs include gelatin, stearic acids and salts.

While the overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars reject the use of porcine-based ingredients in food and beverages, there is a different opinion. A research paper presented at a medical fiqh seminar in 1995 in Kuwait argues that pork gelatin and salt derived from pork undergoes a transformation (istihalah in Arabic) from “najs” into “halal” because their chemical composition changes. This transformation, according to the author Dr. Mohammad Hawari, allows the use of pork gelatin in food production. Dr. Hawari had a background in pharmaceutical sciences and industrial food chemistry and he was actively engaged in his local Muslim communities; he was the founder and first chairman of the Islamic Centre Brussels and co-founder of the Islamic Centre Aachen in Germany where he served as its vice chairman for 18 years.

Dr. Hawari’s opinion is considered uncommon at best and Fetouaki confirmed that juices clarified with pork gelatin will not be considered halal according to standards in key Islamic economies such as the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Malaysia and Indonesia.

LABELING DILEMMA

At the supermarket, our homemaker and mother of two Hala Farran would never detect any “suspicious ingredients” on fruit juice labels as German law doesn’t enforce manufacturers to declare their methods or supporting materials on the product label as long as it is not an additive that is added to preserve the taste, the color or the quality of the juice.

“There is no regulation that forces juice producers to write on the package label which gelatin is used to clarify the juice,” said Britta Klein, a spokesperson and science editor at the Federal Nutrition Center.

However, Halal Control stresses that it is possible to scientifically trace pork gelatin in clarified juice, an understanding confirmed by Klein. “It must be traceable. I’m quite sure, yes. We will find pork gelatin [if scientifically tested],” she said. 

A solution for this labelling dilemma might be in the form of a vegan label, the V-Label.

As mentioned earlier, the EU has agreed to impose a strict legal definition and labelling for vegan and vegetarian food starting 2019.

Klein points out that juices in Germany that carry the vegan label are not clarified with animal gelatin.

While vegan consumers are only 1 percent of Germany’s population—compared to nearly 5 percent of the population who are Muslims—they are, said Klein, “… very present and very loud in the German media.”

HALAL STANDARD

With the growing Muslim population in Germany, there is a clear need for better labeling regulations. However, halal certifiers, food manufacturers and the state have not come to a fruitful conclusion even after sitting down for a dialogue in April 2016.

“The Muslim front was not unified. Manufacturers came to us and asked for a standard. But we could not offer [them] one,” said Halal Europe’s Hawary.

The lack of consensus is considered one of the main hurdles facing the formulation of halal food regulations in Germany, even in the eyes of some federal agencies. Klein echoes the frustration often raised by halal market players and stakeholders around the world.

“The problem is that the subject of halal is not defined in one (universal) way. The definition is not a definition because every imam has a definition,” Klein said.

The situation is further complicated for Germany and the EU. Halal standards came to the agenda of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) in 2015 and the technical committee was disbanded. According to the Codex Alimentarius Commission of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the attempt failed because Islamic fiqh issues may create challenges while deciding on the critical issues in the technical process.

“The most issues related to halal production are already regulated and solved in already existing halal standards,” said Halal Control’s Fetouaki referring to Indonesia’s, Malaysia’s and UAE’s halal standards.

For Germany, however, the co-mingling of religious and technical aspects of food standards makes halal a lot more sensitive to tackle. Until a resolution or consensus is formed, Hala Farran would be advised to look out for the V-Label on fruit juice bottles the next time she shops for groceries at her local supermarket.

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