A message is going viral on social media which claims that Cadbury chocolates contain beef. A screenshot from a website is being circulated on social media platforms that says that if a product contains gelatine as an ingredient, that means it was derived from beef. Several people shared this screenshot to claim that Cadbury products sold in India contain beef. But the company says that the message is misleading as it does not relate to India, and its products sold in India do not contain any beef or any other meat-based ingredients.
Many people also tagged the official handles of the company to clarify on the issue, and the company replied to them informing that screenshot shared by them is not related to Mondelez products manufactured in India. Mondelez International is the American company that owns the British company Cadbury now.
“All the products manufactured and sold in India are 100% vegetarian. The green dot on the wrapper signifies that,” the company stressed.
The company also requested people to verify facts related to their products before sharing them further. “As you can well imagine, negative posts like these, damages consumer confidence in our well-respected and loved brands,” the company responded to Twitter users who were spreading the viral claim.
Although the screenshot is indeed from a Cadbury website, the company is right when it says that it is not related to products sold in India. The screenshot contains the URL of the site, which is Cadbury.com.au, which means it is the website of the Australia unit of the company, as .au is the country code top-level domain for Australia.
The webpage shared in the viral message is available at the Halal section of the website, which means that it is talking about products sold in Australia.
This is not the first time the confectionary company had to respond to rumours about the ingredients of its products. People keep alleging from time to time that its popular chocolates contain beef. However, the packaging of its products contains a green dot, which means that it does not use any non-vegetarian ingredients. They only use plant-based and milk-based ingredients.
For example, the ingredients of Dairy Milk are listed as Sugar, Milk Solids, Cocoa Butter, Emulsifiers, apart from added flavours.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the products of Cadbury in India do not contain gelatine derived from gelatine, the viral message used information from Cadbury in Australia to claim it relates to India.