Bad news for vegetarians; refined sugar whitened with bovine bone char

by Sonia Ramachandran

PETALING JAYA: You are a vegetarian and naturally you assume your coffee, tea and
egg-free cakes tailored for vegetarians are safe to consume, right?
This may not be the case if you take refined sugar.
In fact, refined sugar may be something that cannot be taken by all non-beef eating
Malaysians.
Especially if the sugar used is derived from sugarcane.
According to an article in The Huffington Post on Jan 5, titled, Your Sugar Might Be
Made With Animal Bones. Sorry, Vegans, the refining of sugar may include the use of
animal bones.
To manufacture table sugar from sugarcane, sugarcane stalks are crushed to separate
the juice from the pulp. The juice is processed and heated to crystalize, and is then

filtered and bleached with bone char, which results in sugar's pristine white colour, the
article said.
It said this process is not used for beet sugar because this type of sugar doesn't require
the same extensive decolourisation.
In Malaysia, sugarcane is the major source of sugar production.
The Huffington Post article went on to say that in the United States, sugar companies
use bone char derived from cows for the filtering and bleaching process for sugar
derived from sugarcane.
To make bone char, animal bones are heated at incredibly high temperatures and are
reduced to carbon before being used in a refinery. The sugar does not actually contain
bone char particles, but it does come into contact with them, it said.
Malaysian Vegetarian Society president Dr P Vythilingam told Theantdaily that is why
vegans and vegetarians should not take refined sugar.
He said he had written to a major sugar refinery with regard to the use of bone char in
the refinery process but had yet to receive a reply.

When they dont reply, that is a problem, said

Vythilingam.
This was one of the reasons Vythilingam is asking the
government to label all products that are safe for
vegetarians with vegan and vegetarian labels.
Vythilingam explained that vegans are those who only
consume food which are plant-based and do not take
anything which has milk or milk products, while
vegetarians take milk, with some even taking eggs.

We have been asking for this labelling for more than 10 years. That is why I am starting
a council where all organisations that are vegetarian-based will come under one group.
This will make our membership about a million.
With the council we are hoping our voice will be heard, said Vythilingam, who is urging
all vegetarian groups to join him.
His advice to vegetarians is this: Do not take refined sugar. Refined sugar is all the
white and brown sugar sold in the shops. Unrefined and unprocessed sugar will be the
safest for those who are really vegetarian.
Organic sugar should be safe too as it is not processed in the normal plant, he said.
The Huffington Post article does state that not all cane sugar is refined with bone char
with some companies relying on alternatives for filtering like granular carbon, which
does not contain animal products.
You wouldn't be able to tell the difference by looking at the sugar or by tasting it, and
loose sugar packets and packaged foods with non-descriptive ingredients can make it
impossible for a person to distinguish sugar refined with bone char from its counterpart,
said the article.
A 2007 article on The Vegetarian Resource Groups (VRG) website said companies in
the United States still use cow bone char as the preferred filter for cane sugar, with
some exceptions such as one refinery using an ion exchange system that cost $30
million, and another company using granular carbon instead of bone char while one
company produces turbinado sugar that has not been processed through bone char.
The article said that it was the consumers love affair with white, sweet foods that
made the sugar industry develop a sugar refining process that would produce pure
white crystals.
It said that the most efficient and most economical whitening filters are bone char filters,
thereby maintaining their position as the cane sugar filter of choice for the sugar
industry.
Since sugar is not exactly an expensive commodity in Malaysia, one would presume the
most economical processes are used in the filtering process.

The silence from the sugar refinery that Vythilingam wrote to also speaks volumes about
the refining process.
Until the actual refining process used in this country is known, vegans, vegetarians and
the non-beef eating community might want to err on the side of caution and stick with
unprocessed or unrefined sugar.
- See more at: http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Bad-news-for-vegetarians-refined-sugarwhitened-with-bovine-bone-char#sthash.cPEtXwUD.dpuf