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Veggies Beware! - Quorn Partners with McDonalds!

boycott quorn | 05.04.2004 15:22 | Animal Liberation | Ecology | Globalisation

Shocking news for veggie Quorn lovers everywhere! Quorn (tm) say they are "deligthed to team up with McDonalds" (tm) to offer the new Quorn Premiere Burger...



A major new commercial partnership between McDonalds and the Quorn Brand has recently begun.

Quite why Marlow Foods Limited (Europe's largest company dedicated to producing and marketing branded meat alternative food products) would take their best selling Quorn brand (meat-free alternative and healthy image) into McDonalds and not expect to get some negative customer feedback is beyond me!

OK, so the business of food is big business (the UK retail meat-free market is worth almost $600m) and trends indicate that while vegetarians are the base support for producs like Quorn, there is also a strong meet eater market for 'healthy alternatives' - which is why we now get this McQuorn Burger.

That said I doubt I'll be buying Quorn again after their partnering with McDonalds. Instead I'll be buying other brands like Linda MaCartney and using more Soya Textured Vegetable Protein, Tofu, Tempeh and Wheat Protein - info on these from :  http://www.vegsoc.org/info/soya.html

Vegans have avoided Quorn tm products as these contain eggs, but now I can imagine a lot more people avoiding them all together.

If anyone wants to complain about their new partnership with McDonalds here's some contact information:

Quorn Website Feedback Form:
 http://www.quornworld.com/uk/contact/index.php

Marlow Foods Ltd
Station Road
Stokesley
Middlesbrough
TS9 7AB
Cleveland
Tel: 01642 710803
Fax: 01642 717229
Internet:  http://www.quorn.com

Marlow Foods UK headquarters is based in Stokesley on the northern fringes of the county of North Yorkshire with production facilities at both their Stokesley and Billingham Sites.

PS Marlow Foods is owned by Astra Zeneca

boycott quorn

Comments

Hide the following 20 comments

I just mailed them this

05.04.2004 15:31


Having seen the new small stickers on your products saying that you are teaming up with McDonald's to offer a Quorn tm burger, I am hereby notifying you that I shall no longer be buying your products (I used to buy them on a weekly basis). I am also disappointed that a product so closely identified with vegetarians and healthy eating should be participating in such a joint promotion with McDonalds, who are of course closely associated with unhealthy eating and poor working conditions.

consumer power!


how horrible!

05.04.2004 15:34

first it is said that my Orangina might be hijacked by Coca-Cola, now the quorn-burgers get kidnapped into Mc Donalds to pester eco-kids.

& the taz was in discussion to be bought up by Springer (dunnno if they finally did) and Walkers Crisps is said to be sponsoring George W. Bushs re-election campaign.

Even the ecological fly-away sandals Birkenstock prevents trade Unionism and what else is there we do not boycott yet?

Fazit:
It is impossible to lead an ethical life in the wrong system!

Smash capitalism!

i love quorn burgers


And make your own food

05.04.2004 16:04

Make your own burgers. Cheap and easy.Beans, tofu, veg etc. I've just emailed Quorn. They can go fuck themselves. More slow food. less packaging, less waste, less pollution, less health problems. Also boycott RealEat veggiburger mix people - sponsors of Bush. Don't be lazy. DIY.

No quorn sausages for me any more :-(


Quorn Sucks - Just go Vegan

05.04.2004 16:18

better for you, for the animals and for the environment.

Sucks


Why are you surprised ?

05.04.2004 17:09

You seem surprised that this has happended, Marlow Foods is just another big business, it saw a gap in the market and filled it. By buying Quorn you have contributed to capitalism in the same way as you do with nearly every purchase you make.

You can't beat the system.

Vegan Vera


wouldn't touch them anyway

05.04.2004 17:31

i'm a vegan, so wouldn't touch quorn or linda mcartney rubbish in any case. given quorn's history (only started using free range eggs a couple of years ago), more dubious business ethics from them hardly surprise me.

andy lawson


Quorn still use battery eggs

05.04.2004 17:55

Actually Quorn still use battery eggs in some of their products. They claim that they can't get hold of enough free-range eggs for all of their products. Of course, even most free-range eggs come from appalling factory farms. Give Quorn a miss, if you want veggie processed food try The Redwood Company, which are all vegan and taste a lot nicer than Quorn anyway.

Arp
- Homepage: http://www.whyveg.co.uk


Lifestylist white privilege bollix...

05.04.2004 18:26

You sad sack, white privilege, lifestylist eejits should all be put against the wall a course... there is nothing revolutionary about what ye have for yir dinner. Yawn, go vegan, save all the fluffy bunnies, while the rest of the world is being wiped out by coca-cola death squads. The phrase "quorn sucks" says it all yiz goddam imperialist lapdogs...

Red Ted
mail e-mail: offthepig2004@yahoo.com
- Homepage: http://www.madpride.org.uk


red tosser

05.04.2004 19:39

U Rlooser troll Red. Boycott Coke? You shouldnt be guzzling that brain screwing, teeth rotting, planet fucking crap in the first place.

Go Boycott Go - lets build more Coke factories and support globalisation (FYI that's sarcasm)

save the planet - go vegan


Food IS Revolutionary!

05.04.2004 19:51

"there is nothing revolutionary about what ye have for yir dinner"

THREE WORDS... "Food Not Bombs"
from mexico to india, food is a revolutionary issue.

And in related news, spot on infoview from schnews on gack:

GACK ATTACK

“The triumph of the fast-food system was aided at almost every step by government subsidies, lack of proper regulation, misleading advertisements and a widespread ignorance of how fast, cheap food is actually produced. This system is not sustainable. In less than three decades it has already done extraordinary harm. When the fast food industry is made to bear the costs it is now imposing on the rest of society, it will collapse.” - Eric Schlosser, author of ‘Fast Food Nation’.

This week a survey about our junk food nation revealed that the expression ‘let them eat cake’ is being taken literally when it comes to toddlers in Britain. It seems that all those future World Cup champions are being brought up with a more-than healthy dose of good-ol’ chocolate, chips and white bread - and that the majority of all children in Britain do not eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables each day. So it’s not surprising that childhood obesity is becoming an epidemic with the Chief Medical Officer, referring to the disease as a “health time bomb.”

But while Neo Labour tries to dump the lard problem on the public for not exercising enough and not eating up all yer (genetically modified) greens, in reality it could have something to do with the selling-off of school playing fields, school dinners in the hands of profit motivated contractors, and the lashings of junk food advertising aimed at kids which the Govt refuse to do anything about.
Eat Shit & Die

Food advertising aimed at children is dominated by high-salt, sugary and fatty foods. Despite a report by 106 organisations calling for a ban, and research by the government’s own Food Standards Agency which found, would you believe, that “advertising does affect children’s food choices and behaviour, and not just which brands but the types of food they choose”, the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said the government would not be regulating junk food ads and instead will give us all “informed choices” and talk about partnerships (‘partnerships’ where those selling their crap get some good PR by giving away things like McDonalds vouchers for kids that are well behaved.) Partnerships where the Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, was ‘delighted’ that Cadburys were helping raise funds for sports equipment in schools. How? By persuading children to eat mountains of chocolate of course! Food and farming group, Sustain, calculated that to receive a set of volley ball net posts, school kids would need to stuff down 1.25 million calories at a cost of £2,000.

So who do we blame? Deirdre Hutton, chair of the National Consumer Council reckons “We must move beyond the blame game and start giving parents real practical help. The majority of snacks aimed at children are packed with high levels of sugar, fat and salt. More than 95% of food advertising on children’s TV is for foods that do little to encourage healthier diets. Supermarket check-outs are stacked with sweets and other gack. It’s little wonder that parents often struggle against pester power.” The response from the food and advertising industries is of course that advertising doesn’t persuade anyone to buy anything! So why on earth do they waste $50 billion globally a year (McDonalds alone spends $2bn annually) - greater than the gross domestic product of 70% all the world’s countries - on advertising!? Tim Mobsby from Kellogg’s even told Parliament that children would “stop eating breakfast” if advertisements for sugary cereals like Coco Pops were taken off children’s TV!


The Icing on the Cack

The food industry has become very good at keeping sugar out of the spotlight and in our food instead, hiding their products in everything from ‘liquid candy’ drinks to pizzas, while obscuring its dangers. Scientists from the British Nutrition Foundation and International Life Sciences Institute attacked attempts to create British and international guidelines on sugar consumption. Both bodies are paid for by corporations like Coca-cola whose drinks contain over six teaspoons of sugar per can! As Professor Phillip James, from the committee on dietary guidelines explained: “The sugar industry has learned the tricks of the tobacco industry. Confuse the public. Produce experts who disagree, try to dilute the message, indicate that there are extremists like me involved in public health.”

These very same forces that peddle their unhealthy crap to children are the same vast multinational food traders, processors and retailers which scour the globe to obtain the cheapest raw ingredients to turn into high-profit, long-shelf life processed foods that dominate supermarket shelf-space. The same forces that have helped close down all the small family run farms and local shops. The same lot that has helped make all our shopping centres look and feel the same, drowning us in rubbish and encouraging low paid, low skilled workforces; the same force that has encouraged the cruelty of factory farming... We could go on (we usually do). The same corporations whose mentality is a whole lot more destructive than merely just turning us into a nation of lard-arses, and one whose power Neo Labour just hasn’t got the wholemeal stomach to take on.

* To read about getting away from imported supermarket food and growing yer own see www.schnews.org.uk/sotw/digging-for-victory.htm
* A new bill in America aims to protect fast food giants from future lawsuits and instead make obesity solely the responsibility of individuals. Dubbed the “Cheeseburger Bill”, the tobacco industry must be green with envy they didn’t come up with something like this.  http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/04_cheeseburger
* The report ‘How Green Is Your Supermarket?’ shows that supermarket shoppers are spending £470 a year - a sixth of their food budget - on packaging while delivery lorries travel the equivalent of two return trips to the moon every day.
* Get this months Ecologist magazine for in depth stuff on the Slow Food movement.  http://www.theecologist.org

------------------

Positive SchNEWS

School dinners don’t just have to be burgers and chips - and to prove it one woman who works at St Peter’s Primary school in Nottingham has set about making sure school dinners are worth queuing for.

Jeanette Orrey started providing school meals on site using as many organic and locally produced ingredients as possible. And although ingredient costs have doubled, the cost of a dinner has stayed the same thanks to cutting out contract suppliers and bureaucracy. Soaring demand for school meals at St Peter’s has also helped – 90% of the kids eat there now, compared to a national average of 45%.

Dinner time has also taken on an educational role – kids designing menus and learning about and the amount of pollution caused by food travelling thousands of miles. Parents can now eat at the school any day and on Wednesdays senior citizens are served by some of the older children who then sit and eat with them. She says “I’m just trying to provide decent, fresh food for the children and making sure they learn what food’s good for them. It’s what being a school cook should be about.” www.localfoodworks.org

* The Soil Associations Cultivating Communities Project is having a ‘Linking Farms, Families and Food’ Conference on 15th April at Penwith Business Centre, Longrock, Penzance 0845 458 0194  http://www.cuco.org.uk
* ‘Good Food on the Public Plate’ by Sustain and East Anglia Food Link says that buying local food for use in our school, hospital and prison canteens would boost local economies by at least £5 billion. Copies: 020 7837 1228  http://www.sustainweb.org

FROM:  http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news448.htm

back to basics


the trend continues...

06.04.2004 00:20

...seems corporations renowned for bad business are just as eager to be associated with "friendlies" as they ever were...go search on how StarBUCKS has been cashing in on Fair Trade events by using them to publicise their fair trade coffee.

If "*$s" think so highly of Fair Trade...why isn't all their coffee as such yet? There's no excuse in this day and age.

Don't be fooled! :(

thoughtyoushouldknow


I wiz jest sayin a course...

06.04.2004 08:18

a radical penguin
a radical penguin

...of course I support healthy food and healthy eating, as part of what the Black Panther Party called a 'revolutionary survival program'. But without capitalism all food would be healthy: to call this revolutionary is like calling paracetamol a cure for alcoholism.

Red Ted
mail e-mail: offthepig2004@yahoo.com


No, this is what you said ...

06.04.2004 09:52

"You sad sack, white privilege, lifestylist eejits should all be put against the wall a course... there is nothing revolutionary about what ye have for yir dinner. Yawn, go vegan, save all the fluffy bunnies, while the rest of the world is being wiped out by coca-cola death squads. The phrase "quorn sucks" says it all yiz goddam imperialist lapdogs..."

No backtracking now.

Either you admit this post was from your ego - or lose cred, Ted.

I've heard it said, that revolution is but three meals away ...

Every action has a consequence.

The consequence of indulging your tastebuds/lifestyle/brand-loyalty eating habits reverberates around the world. Do you really think that there is no connection between the fact that 10% of the world chronically overeats and 25% barely know where there next meal is coming from?

We give up our power when we give up our money and our conscience.

A million small choices start to make big choices no?

I can't preach a vegan lifestyle, nor even suggest that eating meat is wrong (disgusting maybe!) - but we had better believe that, to carry on as is, we is haeding for disaster.

Mcdonalds are the storm troopers of the frankenstein ss division - to align oneself with them is a declaration of solidarity, treason and war.

karen elliot


quorn is gack

06.04.2004 11:09

check out this site that quotes scientists saying that

"mushrooms are as distantly related to Quorn’s fungus as humans are to jellyfish"

Nice.

eyes


Human penguins unite a course...

06.04.2004 12:16

Che reindeer and Marx & Engels pengwenz at a recent summit on fish & oatmeal
Che reindeer and Marx & Engels pengwenz at a recent summit on fish & oatmeal

Surely if the furthest you can put yourselves out in order so assuage your bourgeois guilt is changing your burger brand, them humans are jellyfish...

Red Ted
mail e-mail: offthepig2004@yahoo.com


only you

06.04.2004 17:53

Red ted

are suggesting that this is the furthest [anyone] is put themselves out

how far do you go penguin lover?

i too have heard alarming speculation (isn't it always?!?) that there are schools of thought abroad in the 'scientific community' that would reclassify the microfungus that quorn is made from as basically animal in form!

not very tasty (or the wrong kind of taste) for me!

karen elliot


It's a repulsive idea

06.04.2004 22:13

the idea behind Quorn was first promulgated in an early '70s novel, The Sheep Look Up, which postulated a contaminated batch of the product was disseminated worldwide, promoting population reduction. The chickeny versions taste repulsively like cruelly reared chickens, and the whole batch is best avoided by vegans, veggies and the others

dh


Why the idiocy?

07.04.2004 17:43

You people make me laugh. Do you think Quorn, or anyone else for that matter, gives the slightest toss that one of their consumers has vowed never to buy Quorn again, because they made a smart business decision to partner with the world's largest fast-food franchise?

You silly, silly people. If you're vegan or veggie, then simply stay away from the choice other people may wish to take. Comments such as "smash capitalism" are just plain stupid. I'm a veggie and I eat whatever *I* choose to eat... and respect those who choose to make their own choices.

Stop trying to mould the world around your own pea-sized lives. Quorn can do what they wish, as can any other company. If you don't like it, go elsewhere -- or set up your own organizations to serve people like yourselves.

Bobby


rubbish turds

09.04.2004 15:22

I'd thought i'd log on and see what the brain doners at indymedia have to say. Nothing important as per-usual but the do like the shapes of their own paragraphs. IT'S A GOOD THING NOBODY REALLY CARES WHAT YOU THINK. And before you remind me that the other smeg-features on this board are really interested in your opinion, when i say "nobody" - take it as an abbreviation for "nobody important".

I like Bobby's attitude - it's like reading a left-wing Daily Star. Is anyone else hooked on thoser text maniacs comments and those picture stories of ugly blondes who think a bit too much for ugly blondes? I was going to write into Dear Deidre about the problems in my love life but i didn't. There's news for you.

Quorn's owned by Astra-Zeneca anyway - who are a scum-bag company as i'm sure you all know. Did their plant in Aderly Edge used to be the ICI one where Mike Huskisson stole some dogs from?

Now go away.

Thrash Silly


My mail to Quorn

02.09.2004 13:08

I wrote this to Quorn origionally

As a Vegetarian I have been an avid fan of quorn for many years. I regularly purchase a variety of different Quorn products and have advocated it virtues to fellow veggies and carnivores alike.
This however has just changed.
I am utterly disgusted to find there is now a partnership between your organization and McDonald! I can't understand how a company, such as yours, can utterly disregard the strong feelings that much of its customer base have against McDonalds. There two main bones of contention

1- McDonald as a massive an unscrupulous multination. Their activities have a detrimental effect on the environment; they are responsible for the slaughter of millions of animal every year. They then promote eating meat to young children (remember the hamburger patch adverts).

2- Mcdonalds are responsible for promoting un-healthy eating. They push their garbage foods on to an already over weight nation. Their junk is, as already stated, is marketed at young children to get them hooked from an early age. McDonalds seem to have an utterly irresponsible attitude.

Quorn is a product aimed at the vegetarian or "healthy eating" market. To partner with McDonalds is an insult to both markets.

I will not be purchasing any Quorn products until this unholy alliance is dissolved.


I had a letter back saying that "If we were to restrict the distribution to restaurants and shops which don't sell meat, then Quorn would be unavailable to the vast majority of consumers."
Which kind of missed the point so I repplied



my objection to the McQuorn product is not that Quorn is being sold by a restaurant that sells meat. If it where then I could not legitimately purchase Quorn anywhere except health food shops as all Super Markets and other food outlets sell meat products. The objection I had was MacDonald’s themselves as a choice of partner company.
MacDonalds are, in my opinion, one the most irresponsible and destructive corporations in the world. Whose corporate philosophy seems to be diametrically opposed to the principles of most vegetarians.
I appreciate that the partnership with MacDonalds will increase sales of Quorn and will introduce your products to new people. This is, in itself, a good thing; your products are good and healthy! What is not good is aiding such a downright evil corporation such as MacDonalds. Over the past few years MacDonlads have come in for a fairly savage beating in the press. People have woken up to the fact that they have been pushing their crap food to young children, getting them hooked on junk food from an early age, destroying vast tracts of rain forest to grow cheap beef and generally behaving in an irresponsible and destructive way. Basically putting their profits before such minor concerns as the health of our children and the state of the planet.
In partnering with MacDonalds you are aiding and abetting in their new "make over". Their recent image change is nothing more than that an "image change" , at heart they are still the same ruthless corporation peddling the same crud to the same market i.e. 3rd rate meat off cuts too 5 year old kids. I can't think of any other junk food outlet that markets itself so blatantly at children. The penny was beginning to drop. People where beginning to see through the carefully construct images of happy smiley clowns. The true nature of the MacDonald’s corporation was being revealed and guess what? Sales where down! But now with some clever PR and a little help from Quorn they may still get to turn that around. They are now, after all, a nice responsible company that sells salads and now a leading vegetarian/ health food product. How cozy, how nice, how safe, how responsible, just the kind of company you would happily take your little children to. Who cares if little Johnnie just wants a Big Mac it can't be that bad they sell health food after all!
This is what I object to and this is why I will not be buying Quorn again.
I know my feelings are shared by a large proportion of your market. I would watch you sales figures carefully this alliance may prove to be costly in the long run. I fear Marlow foods may be making the making the equivalent mistake of a politician who alienates his core voters by support some hot issue that will win short term popularity. In the short term votes are up but in the long term.........................

That about sums it up I think!!!


Ivan
mail e-mail: ivanzyt@hotmail.com


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