http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ca ... e-38184599

Do these people live in houses? Wear clothes? Eat ANY sort of food?

ALL CONTAIN ANIMAL PRODUCT IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER.

I'm sorry, but this sort of stupidity is tragic in this day and age.

Man is designed as an omnivore!!

Why is it that some people are so desperate to be offended by something. No one is asking the ****s to eat the bloody things.

I have some degree of sympathy for the Hindus in this and rather less so for the vegans and veggies.

I'm also a bit perplexed that whatever polymer they are using requires any tallow at all. On further inspection it appears that stearates are used to make manufacturing easier - they provide lubrication (to prevent sticking to metal parts) during manufacture and also scavenge out/inactivate residual catalyst particles.
You can make stearate completely synthetically but it's vastly cheaper to make it from rendered fat. I don't really see why they couldn't use veg fat derived stearate.

Also, I think it got mentioned on The Last Leg, the amount of fat used in the entire production run amounts to half a cows worth. The amount per note is completely minuscule. You probably get more tallow on you walking past a burger van than you will handling a new fiver.

I have to agree. There's an almost homeopathic amount of animal product in each fiver.

I think it was on Mock the Week – they said the total amount of tallow used for ALL £5 in circulation was equivalent to ½ a cow