Reading room Questions for the archivist

You probably have questions.

So did we. Here are honest, short, slightly opinionated answers to the things people actually ask about VeganArchive — how it works, why it exists, what we don’t do, and what to do if you think we’ve got something wrong.

— The Archivist

  1. Q.01 Why does this exist when there are vegan apps already?

    Most vegan apps guess. They scrape labels, parse ingredient lists with patterns, and serve up a verdict. That works until it doesn’t — a label changes, an ingredient is sourced differently, an app updates twelve months too late. We don’t guess. We email the company, store their reply, and publish it as the receipt that backs every verdict. If a record is wrong, the receipt is right there for you to read.

  2. Q.02 How do you decide if something is vegan?

    We don’t. The company does. We send them one polite question. They reply. A reviewer reads the reply and files it as one of four verdicts: Vegan, Vegetarian, Not vegan, or Unclear. The reply is published verbatim, attributed, and dated. The decision is theirs. Our job is to file it accurately and keep the record up to date.

  3. Q.03 Who reads the replies? An algorithm?

    A bit of both. When a reply arrives in our inbox, software does the boring part: it extracts the most relevant sentence, looks for hedging language, and flags anything that needs careful reading. Then a human — currently me, the archivist — actually reads the email and decides whether to publish it. Every published verdict has been read by a person. Always. No exceptions, no thresholds, no auto-approval at 95% confidence. The whole point of the archive is that someone read it.

  4. Q.04 What’s a "receipt"?

    The actual email reply from the company, stored verbatim. When you look at a case file, the receipt is the part that says "we wrote to X, they replied with Y on date Z." The receipt is what makes a verdict trustworthy — not because we say so, but because there’s a real piece of evidence to back it up.

  5. Q.05 What happens if a company never replies?

    We file the case as Open. After ten days we may send a polite nudge. After twenty-one days, the case stays Open indefinitely — still publicly visible — and a reader can submit new evidence (a recent reply, packaging change, ingredient reformulation) to reopen it. We don’t fabricate a verdict from silence.

  6. Q.06 Why do you mark things as "Unclear"? Just say yes or no.

    Because sometimes the company’s answer is unclear, and we’d rather show that than pretend otherwise. "May contain traces of milk." "We cannot guarantee." "Please check the label." A reply that hedges is itself useful information — it tells you the company isn’t willing to commit, which is something you might want to know before you buy.

  7. Q.07 Can I trust this?

    You can trust the receipt. Every verdict has a real, dated reply from a real company. You can read the email yourself on any case file page. We don’t hide the source. If the receipt says something the verdict doesn’t match, file a request and we’ll review it. The whole archive is built on you being able to check our work.

  8. Q.08 What about cross-contamination and shared equipment?

    We always ask companies about both ingredients and processing aids/shared equipment in the same email. If they confirm both are clean, the verdict is Vegan with high confidence. If they confirm ingredients but not equipment, we usually mark Unclear with a note explaining what was and wasn’t addressed. Reading the receipt tells you the rest.

  9. Q.09 I found something wrong on a record. What do I do?

    Submit a request from the homepage with what you spotted — reformulated packaging, a more recent reply you’ve had from the company yourself, an ingredient change. Records can be re-opened and re-verified. Nothing in the archive is so old it can’t be challenged.

  10. Q.10 How is this different from Barnivore?

    Barnivore is a brilliant resource and a huge inspiration for this project — they have been publicly cataloguing the vegan status of beer, wine and spirits for over twenty years. If you’re looking for anything alcoholic, they should be your first stop. Visit them at barnivore.com.

  11. Q.11 Are you a charity? An activist group?

    Neither. We’re a public record service. The site doesn’t campaign, doesn’t lobby, doesn’t take sides on whether you should or shouldn’t eat animal products. We just keep an accurate file on which products are vegan, with the evidence to prove it. What you do with the information is your business.

  12. Q.12 Who’s behind this?

    Right now: one person, working evenings. The archive grows slowly because every entry is a real conversation with a real company. If that changes — more people, more replies, more pages — we’ll say so on this page.

  13. Q.13 How is this funded?

    Currently: out of pocket. Eventually: optional supporter contributions and possibly transparent paid brand profiles, where a verified company can claim its listing and add product photos and links. Crucially, paying for a profile would never affect the verdict. The verdict comes from the receipt, not from who’s paid us. If we ever cross that line you should stop trusting the archive and tell us so.

  14. Q.14 I’m a company. Will my reply be made public?

    Yes. We tell you so in the email itself. The reply is stored verbatim and attributed to your company, dated. If you’d like to update a reply later — because of a recipe change, a new processing partner, or a clarification — just email us and the record is updated with the new information stored alongside the old. Nothing gets quietly rewritten.

  15. Q.15 Why does the lamp change colour during the day?

    Because libraries do. The hero scene shifts through night, dawn, day, and sunset based on the time you visit. The Tiffany lamp dims when daylight comes in, brightens at dusk. After hours the whole archive dims with it — every page goes warm and low-lit, the way a real reading room would once the librarian flips the lights. It serves no functional purpose. We just liked it.