Dallas, TX-based candy company Pecan Deluxe Candy recently reformulated its recipes to be vegan to avoid new British export regulations, which impose hefty taxes on animal products. To do so, the American wholesaler has replaced the butter and eggs in its products with plant-based alternatives that do not require the same EU border checks.
After Brexit, new export regulations require exporters of animal-based foodstuffs to submit veterinary certification and other costly documents. And, depending on how the rules are interpreted, border control officials can stop deliveries and turn them away and destroy them, further straining the supply chains of customers in Europe. Companies like Pecan Deluxe Candy are working on these issues
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“One of the biggest issues is implementing border control checks,” Graham Kingston, managing director of Pecan Deluxe Candy Europe, told AFP. “[They have been] Stopping a lot of deliveries depending on the interpretation of the rules, which has led to a lot of problems with products being returned to us which have all been destroyed.”
Vegan products, on the other hand, are not subject to the same restrictions, making them cheaper and more efficient to transport.
Pecan Deluxe Candy is a family-owned manufacturer of candy products, including dessert staples such as toppings, baking inclusions, fudge, cookie dough and popping candies with locations in the UK and Thailand. The company said the new regulations cost them more than £100,000 (US $123,450), so its board of directors decided to remove animal products from their production facilities in the United Kingdom to reduce these export costs for the European market.
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Now that the product range is all vegan candies, the company says the products are cheaper to produce and tap into the current vegan movement. “A plant-based range has more benefits to offer, which are reduced in price, and are hitting a number of trends in play at the moment, not least veganism,” says Kingston.
Making vegetarian ingredients more affordable
While vegan products are often thought of as more expensive, new British export regulations have turned this stereotype on its head and may cause other businesses to rethink their use of animal products for the same reasons as Pecan Deluxe Candy.
With the rise of veganism, plant-based food companies have had the added challenge of matching the prices of their animal-based counterparts because, traditionally, animal agriculture has been heavily subsidized by the government, ultimately making these products more affordable.
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According to the Agriculture Fairness Alliance (AFA), in 2020 the US government spent more than $50 billion on agricultural subsidies and bailouts, most of which favored the meat and dairy industries. AFA is a national advocacy organization that pushes for policy changes that make sustainable plant-based foods affordable and accessible to all consumers. The answer, according to the AFA, is to level the playing field.
AFA is currently lobbying for changes to the 2023 Farm Bill, which provides farmers with safety nets, farm loans, conservation and disaster assistance programs. One of AFA’s recommendations is to increase subsidies, funding and/or programs for indigenous plant-based crops to connect local plant-based farmers with local consumers and to ensure that plant farmers receive a fair share of programs that use the Commodity Credit Corporation and others. When the money is bailed out.
“Meat eaters also eat fruits and vegetables and we should agree that the food system needs to change. Our tax money should not allow global ag to get richer and more powerful and control our land and use our resources in response,” AFA posted on social media. “This is one of our Farm Bill priorities and more … ensuring that our taxes go directly to consumer fruits, vegetables and grains. Not a livestock-grade crop. Our tax dollars must prioritize consumers, not global investors.”
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In 2020, AFA urged members of Congress to support legislation that would shift the U.S. food supply away from factory farms and toward more sustainable forms of agriculture. At the time, AFA met with Congress to discuss its At-Risk Farmers Pilot Program, which would provide funding to nonprofit organizations that help livestock farmers who want to transition to sustainable efforts such as supplying plant-based food markets.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the group pushed Congress to support the At-Risk Farmers Act as part of the next coronavirus relief package, along with other proposed legislation aimed at dismantling centralized feed animal feeding operations (also known as factory farms) — which, According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), meat accounts for 98 percent of production.
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“When we’ve been taught all our lives that the American dream means anyone can start a business and be successful as long as they offer a superior product, I never dreamed we’d babysit the livestock and dairy industries to impose their own success on them. “AFA co-founder Connie Spence said at the time. “It’s time for the American people to decide [which] Products are superior, so that our needs are felt and corporate agricultural interests are prevented from falsely representing American small farmers.”
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Nicole Axworthy is news editor and cookbook author for VegNews DIY Vegan.