This section aims to highlight a few facts that I was unaware of before I looked more closely into potential causes of "needless suffering" to which I might still be inadvertently contributing, even as a vegetarian. I'm not trying to preach here; these are just things that I wish I'd known about sooner. I now drink only vegan beer, try as hard as practically possible to drink only vegan wine and I don't eat honey, either as a direct purchase or as a known ingredient in anything I buy. So here are some facts. Then YOU decide!

1. Vegan wines, beers and spirits

Not all wines, beers and spirits are vegan - or even vegetarian. To borrow a phrase, "not a lot of people know that".

Alcoholic drinks are vegetarian, vegan or neither depending upon two factors - ingredients and conditioning.

The ingredients part is pretty self-explanatory, although it may not be obvious in the end product. Baileys, for instance, is obviously not vegan because it contains cream as a main ingredient. Other products, however, may have less obvious non-vegan ingredients. Campari and some red wines contain colouring in the form of cochineal, a crimson red dye made from the pregnant female cochineal scale insect. Nice. Other examples of less obvious non-vegan ingredients include lactose (milk sugar), other colourings, preservatives, honey and other flavourings.

In the absence of a vegan or vegetarian symbol on the label, knowing what conditioning process was used is impossible when viewing a bottle on a shop's shelf. Many alcoholic drinks are "fined" during production - a process whereby one ingredient is added to the liquid in order to aid removal of another ingredient (eg yeast). Theoretically, the end product doesn't contain much if any of the finings, but the fact that they were used in the process at all is what matters to vegans and vegetarians.

Examples of finings used in beer, cider, wine, sherry and port include egg albumen, isinglass (from swim bladders of tropical fish like the Chinese sturgeon), potassium caseinate or casein (derived from milk), gelatine (nasty), chitin (from lobster or crab shells) and - saving the best until last - animal blood (eg ox blood).  Equally horribly, some imported vodkas are passed through a bone charcoal filter during the conditioning process.

So, where does that leave us? Some products are helpfully labelled as being vegetarian or vegan. Another answer lies in lists that have been researched and published by, for instance, the Vegetarian society. Other lists are available from retailers (eg Tesco, whose web site includes the option to search specifically for vegan wines in the advanced search facility). Alternatively, you can always contact the maker of your favourite tipple and ask the question.

Even then, the answer may not be straightforward. For example, some "versions" of Grolsch (spring top) may be suitable for vegans, whereas others (bottle with crown cork) may not.

I'm personally partial to Carlsberg, all of whose versions (cans, bottles, premium and regular strength, etc) were vegan when I last checked with them. So was Budweiser. Yet Stella Artois, for example, wasn't vegan. I now carry a reminder list in my wallet, for handy reference when visiting new restaurants or pubs.  Bells whisky is vegan, too.

2. Goodbye, honey

Vegans don't eat honey. You may wonder why. The stereotypical image of a beekeeper as a person with a few hives in their back garden is all very nice, but is far removed from the truth.

Most honey bees are managed by factory bee farmers, who routinely kill queen bees every one or two years (as do back-garden beekeepers, despite the fact that the queens can live for up to five years). They then replace them with new ones, subject to them having survived the incoming shipping process (which can involve over-heating, under-heating, damage though bad handling, etc). Hives are also often "split" in half by keepers.

At the onset of winter, some beekeepers kill all of bees in their hives, for purely economic reasons. Even when this isn't done, around 10-20% of the bees may die "accidentally" or on purpose during the winter season. All of this is aside from the bees that die during the process of hives being checked upon and the honey being removed.

So, eating honey is only one more example of supporting practices that exploit and cause harm and death to animals - needlessly.  Maple syrup, on the other hand, is fine - and a very easy switch to make.

3. So long, sugar

Brace yourself!  Bone char is used by some makers of white sugar during the refining process (for around 50% of all sugar made from sugar cane in the USA, according to Wikipedia).  The bone char itself is made from bones sourced from abattoirs.  The bones are almost incinerated, resulting in activated carbon.  Brown sugar is no better, sadly, as it is usually made by adding molasses to white sugar (ie sugar that has already been refined, potentially using bone char).  The good news, however, is that many many manufacturers have taken advantage of advances in technology to replace this process for whitening their sugar.  The best option for the avoidance of doubt is to contact the manufacturer of the sugar that you buy to ask whether they still use bone char.  Otherwise, use maple syrup instead!

More to follow... Watch this space!