THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla

All Natural Additives. Good for you?

Sweden's food watchdog has confirmed to horrified netizens that, yes, ooze from beavers' back-passages is used to add a vanilla flavour to cakes, ice creams and drinks - and has been for years.
A yellowish secretion called castoreum is extracted from the animals' scent-laying anal glands, and is sometimes mixed into perfumes and stuff we eat. It's an alternative to vanilla beans, vanillin, conifer tree extract and other sources of vanilla flavour, and is "generally recognised as safe" by the US authorities.
(theregister.co.uk)