UoB cafe ‘Revive’ label product vegan despite containing eggs

A UoB campus cafe, Revive, has been mislabelling products as 'vegan' when they have been found to contain egg and other animal products.

One student, Alice D'Angelo discovered this after previously buying the tarts, thinking they were Vegan.

The UoB cafe continue to sell these tarts but have removed all labels that state that the tart is Vegan.

Revive cafe is located on the UoB campus, attached to the Murray Learning Centre. After recently being redecorated the cafe now claims to offer more Vegan, Vegetarian, Dairy Free and Gluten Free foods.

The raspberry and almond tart was labelled as 'vegan' when originally sold out of its packaging. Alice D'Angelo, a vegan UoB student who usually buys these tarts, went to buy one when the cafe began to sell them in their original packaging, and discovered that the ingredients list said they contained egg. Alarmed, she immediately spoke to the staff in the cafe and was told that as the packet said 'dairy free' they presumed that meant it was vegan.

Following the incident the staff were friendly and when Alice took the tart back they willingly offered for her to choose something else. They then removed the vegan sign and said that they would look into all other products to make sure they were correctly labelled, as they were only 100% sure about the ingredients of a few products.

When speaking to Alice about the incident she said: "It was annoying knowing I'd spent the extra money for something that was supposed to be vegan when it wasn't."

The Birmingham Tab gained a statement from a spokesperson for the University of Birmingham who said: “We take the labelling and display of food sold on campus very seriously. Following a review, we found that a small number of cake items were taken out of their original packaging and labelled incorrectly. We have taken swift action to ensure that these items are now displayed in their original packaging and that allergens are clearly visible. We would like to apologise and will be reviewing our display policy across all outlets.”

The Tab went to the cafe following the incident and found that the tarts continue to be sold. However, the label created by the cafe themselves has been removed and the tarts are now always sold in their packaging.

If you have discovered issues like this anywhere else on campus, please get in touch with the Tab Birmingham.