Marks and Spencer's launched a sweet range called 'Percy the pig' back in 1992, it has been a well loved favourite with customers. The range has had vegetarian options for a while but now the brand has announced the whole range is vegetarian and all gelatine has been removed from the recipes.
The brand said on twitter "“For the last eight years we have been working to help our favourite pig move away from using pork gelatine". This is not the first time the brand has removed gelatine from there products in 2014 there Colin range was realised gelatine free. Since 2011 there has been vegetarian Percy pigs.
Loads of positive responses have come from the decision, a large number of brands have phrased the company.
I personally think stepping away from unnecessary gelatine and animal use in products has to be a good thing for everyone. Cows themselves have many environmental impacts towards climate change, and the killing of an animal for a bag of sweets should never be seen as acceptable right?. You can really seen the change in eating habits over the last few years and this is a good move in the right direction particularly from such a well known popular brand as established as Marks and Spencer's.
No surprise that there has been some negative back lash to this news, as always there has to be a group of people who are against the decision. People have been campaigning 'bring Percy back' online.
Good morning Britain host Piers Morgan aired his opinions on the topic, saying: “Vegans and vegetarians, go and get your own sweets. Seriously, go and get sweets that aren’t called Percy Pigs. Go and get ones called 'Kale Nicies' which taste disgusting and you can all be happy because they’re made of kale.
“Leave our pig sweets alone you people. Utterly ridiculous, the world’s gone nuts.”
Just to make it very clear gelatine is made by boiling the bones, skin and tendons of an animal - usually pigs or cows - dissolving them in boiling water and leaving them to cool, creating the jelly like substance we know. Sounds delicious right, defiantly an ingredient I want in my sweets.
'The world's gone nuts' is the exact way I would describe what the ludicrous tv host is saying. We now live in a world where we don't have to rely on animals to provide us with everything anymore, fur is now frowned upon by most and a growing population has plant based diet. The fact is you don't need gelatine to make sweets, you just don't. The process is pointless simply for a bag of sweets, I don't see the problem with enjoying something that happens to be vegetarian without necessarily being one yourself. People have so much worry about there own aesthetic than what they're actually eating. I personally think Piers Morgan is just purely making a statement to cause upset and create something controversial for no real reason .
The sweets don't taste very different at all. There's more in life to worry about than what ingredients have changed in a packet of sweets you'll have once in a while, especially when that change will have a positive impact on our crippling environment.