Drowned, dried and crushed beetles..

Well it all started so promisingly as we had a new supplier and we found lots of lovely goodies which we hadn't stocked before, to buy for our dear little vegan shop VegaNation and we were very excited about them.
The ingredients for the sweets weren't listed in the catalogue (which we DON'T like as we are ingredients girls from way back) but everything we ordered was marked with both a V (veggie) and a VG (vegan) in the catalogue and when I placed the order I emphasised that we have a vegan shop and could they check again for me that everything we had ordered was vegan and the very nice lady said she could do that...

Cochineal beetles being crushed, after they have been drowned and dried

So the order arrived and as we were unpacking it we checked ingredients, as you do, and in two of the lines we had ordered, we spotted E120...which to the uninitiated is actually Cochineal, a food colouring (and previously a dye) made from the crushed carcases of South and Central American Beetles.... You can gussy it up all you like and call it cochineal, carmic acid, carmine or E120...it is still dead animals and clearly neither a vegetarian nor a vegan product..
I 'phoned the wholesaler we had bought them from and to her credit she was terribly apologetic and arranged collection of the offending items and refund for their purchase but it was so disappointing to see how casually this issue is treated.
She explained to me that the manufacturers who sell them the products tell them whether the item is suitable for vegetarians, vegans etc and then they, the wholesalers, (without any checking) put that information in their catalogue as a 'guide' for potential buyers..like us...
And the wholesaler (I shall protect her identity here because out of all the wholesalers who have made this or any other mistake she was pleasant and apologetic!) explained that they don't have time to check the ingredients themselves...
You would think that a manufacturer would know what they put in something (did you put drowned, dried, squashed beetles in it or not?) and could therefore be trusted to know who that product would be suitable for.
But since (like us) the wholesaler is in the business of selling them to customers,  it is unacceptable and feeble to say they don't have time to check the ingredients - how can you list something as a vegan product if you don't know what's in it? And if they didn't know what E120 is, they could have LOOKED IT UP the same as we did...
We are long term vegans ourselves, raising vegan children and we take our responsibilities to the people who buy from us seriously...we check labels so our customers don't have to.