Mars Chocolate Red Dot symbol in Egypt
Just saw a Facebook post about a little red dot symbol on Mars chocolate bars sold in Egypt. The post stated:
“Be aware of the Red dot inside a red square symbol which shown on chocolate bars like : Bounty Chocolate bar / Mars/ sneakers … it’s shown specifically at the back beside the weight numbers.
That mark means that these products contains gelatin which is derived from PORK!!
They put that mark to warn vegetarian people that the chocolate bar have non-vegetarian contents/ingredients in it.
PLZ share this info with all your friends and remember that “The One Who Guides Others to Good Deeds is Like the One Who Does Them”
Jazakomullah kolla khair”
Once again we have Muslims who just circulate false information without engaging their minds or without doing a basic search on Google to find the truth. The first thing I did when I saw this was to do a search “mars chocolate red dot symbol statement” knowing full well that when something like this pops up the target company usually puts out a statement. I was not mistaken. The first three hits are from Mars and clearly explains the situation:
“Statement on “red dot†label on Mars chocolate products in Egypt
Mars products always comply to the legal and cultural norms of all the markets it does business in. Mars products, including Snickers, Bounty and Mars bars do not contain pork nor pork derivatives. Mars products are exported to a number of markets, of which India is one; the red dot that may appear on some of our packaging is a legal requirement for the Indian Market. It indicates that the product may contain egg, which is not suitable for some vegetarians in India. Still, to further clarify the matter, we are currently completing the process of separating the packaging for the two markets which will minimize future misunderstanding.”
I wrote the following in response to the original post:
A little bit of commonsense would make you think “why would a company like Mars deliberately send pork laced products to Muslims countries, knowing full well that when the information got out it would damage their reputation and their sales in the Muslim market, which by all accounts is massive?” Anyone one with any sense or any basic research in emerging markets will know that the Muslim consumer and halal markets are the fastest growing and one of the most lucrative in spite of the current economic climate. Even if you are a conspiracy nut, conspiracy is all about money and resource and rarely about religion.
So if you get this message, please DO NOT forward it and reply back to the send with the link to this blog post.
How is it that we have gone from being and an Ummah of learning, knowledge and critical thinking to just lazy forwarders of unsubstantiated messages?
5 thoughts on “Mars Chocolate Red Dot symbol in Egypt”
Salaam Brother
I would like to point out that Bounty, Twix, and M&M’s are not suitable for vegetarians, you can check mars and snickers they will have suitable for vegetarians the others dont, not sure what makes them not suitable but always it is better to check if something is suitable for vegetarians in the uk.
Wasalam
Abu Bakar
get info from the mars site. it would definitely help us the muslims.
http://www.makingchocolatebetter.com.au/
Great help. Muslims are being exploited by such hoax since long. Any attempt or move to ban a page on facebook on blasphemy actually promotes it more.
I’ld appreciate all efforts u made for clarification of one issue. We, the muslims, need efforts like this, to understand every aspect of islam interpretted by different scholers. We should not accept any thing without exploring the reality. Bcoz every one is responsible himself before Allah on the day of Judgement. again good effort to explor what is behind the statement.
Salaams, Often you can easily contact the company on the freephone number and ask either for a vegetarian list of products which they are happy to mail to you, or they can tell you about individual products over the phone and identify the vegetarian and non vegetarian ingredients contained within. Muslims have been in western countries for decades now and it seems that we don’t read the small print, research and find out, we prefer to hear about hoaxes.