<P> In addition to voluntary labelling, the Vegetarian Society operates a scheme whereby foods that meet its criteria can be labelled "Vegetarian Society approved". Under this scheme, a product is vegetarian if it is free of meat, fowl, fish, shellfish, meat or bone stock, animal or carcass fats, gelatin, aspic, or any other ingredient resulting from slaughter, such as rennet . Cheese is often labelled as well, making it possible to identify cheeses that have been made with rennet derived from non-animal sources . </P> <P> In Canada, vegetarianism is usually synonymous with ovo - lacto vegetarianism . However, vegetarians are sometimes wrongly assumed to be pescetarians or pollotarians . Approximately 4.0% of adults were vegetarians as of 2003 . </P> <P> In 1971, 1 percent of U.S. citizens described themselves as vegetarians . In 2008 Harris Interactive found that 3.2% are vegetarian and 0.5% vegan, while a 2013 Public Policy Polling survey of 500 respondents found that 13% of Americans are either vegetarian or vegan--6% vegetarian and 7% vegan . U.S. vegetarian food sales (dairy replacements such as soy milk and meat replacements such as textured vegetable protein) doubled between 1998 and 2003, reaching $1.6 billion in 2003 . According to a report in 2017, the number of consumers claiming to be vegan has risen to 6% in the US In 2015, a Harris Poll National Survey of 2,017 adults aged 18 and over found that eight million Americans, or 3.4%, ate a solely vegetarian diet, and that one million, or 0.4%, ate a strictly vegan diet . </P> <P> Many American children whose parents follow vegetarian diets follow them because of religious, environmental or other reasons . In the government's first estimate of how many children avoid meat, the number is about 1 in 200 . The CDC survey included children ages 0 to 17 years . </P>

How much of the us population is vegetarian