How likely is it for vegan labeled food to use bone char filleted sugar?

Question

I am in the USA to give context.

Answer 1

It rather depends where you live whether bone char (the charred bones of animals) is used in the production of sugar.

In Britain all sugar is vegan because there are only three manufacturers of refined sugar and none of them use bone char. The only exception is icing sugar, that still doesn't contain bone char but does contain egg white so it's vegetarian rather than vegan.

Britain is not alone. Australia, New Zealand and many European Countries have banned bone char in the sugar refining process.

Of course you're mainly interested in the USA and there, together with many other countries, bone char is often used in sugar production. If you want to avoid that then

• organic sugar won't use bone char in its production
• beet sugar production doesn't use bone char although you'd need to be careful that beet sugar hasn't been mixed with cane sugar.
• there are other sites that try to maintain a list of companies that don't use bone char.