78
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org to c/news@beehaw.org

No more cordon blur: France prepares to ban vegetarian products from using meaty language

all 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] laenurd@lemmy.lemist.de 45 points 1 year ago

Terms like ‘steak’, ‘grill’

I get the reasoning behind wanting a clear distinction between animal products and alternative products, but 'grill'? In my understanding, a grill is the appliance you cook (or, in this case, grill) your food with. You can grill vegetables. So why would they ban 'grill'?

[-] curiosityLynx@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

At least in German, there's even a term that translates to grill vegetables. Meaning zucchini, eggplant, ...

[-] Kajo@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Because the rich and powerful meat lobby wants to make life hell for their meat free competitors. The only logic here is money.

[-] Auk@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago

That's a bit rich coming from the people who call a potato a ground apple.

[-] red@feddit.de 14 points 1 year ago

Let me guess, you belong to the people who call an ananas a pine apple?

[-] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

In the future, please do not editorialize titles unless the title is clickbait and you're providing a title which isn't.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Removing "grill" is fucking stupid.

Vegetables can been grilled, too. I can understand "steak" and "spare ribs," but "grill" is not about the food; it's the cooking method.

[-] LChitman@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Is anybody out there buying vegan stuff thinking it's meat? Read the label. You should be doing that anyway.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

honestly if people don't notice it's vegan that company fully deserves to call it meat, more power to them.

[-] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 14 points 1 year ago

Rare French W.

If you wish buy plant based "meat" you should be free to do that, but calling "steak" what clearly isn't is just trying to fool the customer into buying something they're probably not interested in purchasing.

[-] Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org 47 points 1 year ago

Have you ever been confused by coconut milk? Do you think that hamburgers come from Hamburg? Are sweetbreads made from wheat and sugar?

[-] Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 year ago

The worst part is that often people telling you what milk should be or not don't even know how the milk they drink is made or where it comes from. The number of non vegan people who think cows "just make milk" all the time for free and that it's carefully harvested by a dude while rubbing her back when the reality is so drastically more horrifying.

[-] Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

Exactly. If they want honesty in labelling then images of happy cows in fields on dairy products should be replaced by pictures of young calves being pulled from their mothers so they don't consume the milk.

[-] RandoCalrandian@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Oh come on, let’s at least be honest about that (I say as someone who doesn’t drink milk anymore)

Lactating cows will continue to lactate so long as someone is taking the milk, the calves are not getting some type of despicable treatment by being weened off.

…that treatment comes after, in the slaughterhouses

[-] Terminarchs@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 year ago

Do you think that hamburgers come from Hamburg?

...perhaps?

[-] Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

The earliest known burgers I have read about were made and sold as roadside snacks in the Roman empire.

[-] NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Right given all the options I'm waiting more willing to pick that one than the one that involves ham being involved.

[-] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 1 points 1 year ago
  1. No
  2. Yes
  3. I would have guessed that, yes. I guess I just learnt a new word lol

Coconout milk would be confusing if they didn't put a picture of a coconout on the label and made it evident that it what you are buying isn't actually milk. I simply believe this same reasoning also extends to meat and any other products that may have a plant based alternative.

[-] RandoCalrandian@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Coconut milk also isn’t actively trying to replace milk, which isn’t true of the other products.

[-] sanzky@beehaw.org 36 points 1 year ago

this is exclusively about protecting the meat & dairy industry. nothing more.

[-] frog@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago

It was definitely less confusing when vegetarian products always had green packaging, and meat did not. If manufacturers aren't going to be consistent in their colour-coding, then there needs to be more clarity on the language. I'm a vegetarian, and I regularly have to double check what I'm buying because I don't want meat, and when both are packaged in orange-and-white and both called exactly the same thing, with the plant-based one only having a smaller sub-title stating it's plant-based, that doesn't make my life any easier either.

Clear packaging and labelling benefits everybody here.

They don’t do it like that because there’s a large portion of the population that wouldn’t buy an orange if it had a sticker proclaiming it was vegan, because, “did you see the sticker? Who knows what’s in that thing”

[-] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 3 points 1 year ago

Eh I hadn't really considered the flip side but it makes sense, it's also a problem the other way around for vegetarian folks wanting to be able to spot vegetarian products at a first glance, yeah.

[-] magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 10 points 1 year ago

I live in France. I have never encountered any instance of misleading packaging. No one is being fooled. This is a bullshit excuse made up by bullshit people. The meat industry is an extremely powerful lobby here, as is industrial agriculture, and this government is bending over backwards to accommodate their every whim.

[-] Vegoon@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

Do you buy "steak" as in a generic description for something from any animal, or do you buy bison, camel, goat or horse steak? I have only seen plant based steaks or schnitzel where it has it in the name. "Plant based product" or "product based on soy/pea"

[-] Toast@lemmy.film 1 points 1 year ago

Right, but 'steak' does mean a little more than that. It also would indicate a particular kind of cut of meat, which would generally indicate minimal connective tissue, tenderness, location, etc. Now, you could say "well, all that is irrelevant to this discussion", but to an extent is really is relevant. We are talking about how word meanings are being changed and how that influences consumer choice. Imagine if we started to see companies using the word 'vegetarian ' in a way that simply meant 'containing vegetables', regardless of meat content. Already terms like 'organic' are nearly meaningless in some markets. This sort of thing happens.

Imagine a company creating a half-meat and half-plant based burger and calling the product 'Vegan Beef'. Who could be confused, some might argue here, about this product? - it has 'beef' right in the name.

Strict guidelines can also protect consumers.

To return to the original point, the term 'steak' in a food context has already become nearly meaningless (or at least has so many conflicting meanings that it has lost most of its usefulness). 'Milk' is heading that way. 'Organic' is without much meaning in the US. Would you like 'meat-free' labels allowed on foods that had absolutely no muscle-tissue content, but did contain animal organ, bone, and fat content?

[-] Vegoon@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Right, but ‘steak’ does mean a little more than that. It also would indicate a particular kind of cut of meat, which would generally indicate minimal connective tissue, tenderness, location, etc.

So as long as it has "steak" written on it you just care that is any animal with those properties?

Would you like ‘meat-free’ labels allowed on foods that had absolutely no muscle-tissue content, but did contain animal organ, bone, and fat content?

I want a strong indicator that a product contains any animal products. There are already many labels for plant based products but none are required by any law.

[-] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 1 points 1 year ago

To be fair I hardly ever buy packaged meat so I'm not sure how their labels would look. Though I would expect the plant industries would try and pass their plant based product as the real thing, to trick omnivorous people on buying it instead, so they would write "plant based" or whatever as small as possible if at all (depending on food regulations in the country they are selling it in, of course).

I guess such an assumption would base itself in vegetarian people being more careful with what they buy, compared to normal people, otherwise they'd be tricking them too.

[-] Vegoon@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

I am in strong favor a big prominent "contains animal products" label. It would make live so much easier.

[-] RandoCalrandian@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It would make life easier in the same way if the words used to describe meat weren’t then also used to describe plants pretending to be meat

…you’re essentially supporting the intent behind this legislation

[-] Vegoon@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

No, I am against the prohibition of common terms, I advocate for a stricter declaration of ingredients. "Milk" alone could be milk from any mammal, cow, goat, human. Steak could be a cut from any animal, that is why a the animal it is from is declared. Oat milk is called milk since centuries but now the industry fears competition and is publishing propaganda and pays lobbyism for restrictive laws.

[-] Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago

They're not even on the same shelves, there was never any confusion possible, just like people don't think "fruits de mer" are fruits or "lait de corp" is milk. This is just a completely meaningless power move from the lobbies but to be clear it is not in response to people overwhelmingly being tricked into gasp eating healthy products. Now it's the other way around and it's confusing for vegetarian/vegan people because stuff like soy milk is now labeled "soy drink" and is shelved next to the ACTUAL soy drinks with sugar and stuff in it, and so on.

[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Just because it's plant-based doesn't mean it's healthy. You can load up a veggie burger with all sorts of stuff that might have other benefits, but it's not health food. But otherwise, yes, this has lobbies written all over it.

[-] reka@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

As soon as we conceded "milk" for plant milks we were setting off on a long path of bullshit. If something is designed as an alternative to something it should be able to explain it's designed purpose.

[-] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Wasn't there an EU court case a couple of years ago that determined that supplements are allowed use meaty language?

[-] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 2 points 1 year ago

Call any vegetable. Just don't call it "meat".

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summaryThe French government has said it is preparing a new decree against meaty terms like “steak”, “grill” and “spare ribs” being used to describe plant-based products.

Its latest decree is “an issue of transparency and honesty responding to the legitimate expectations of consumers and producers”, agriculture minister Marc Fesneau said in a statement on Monday.

Farmers and firms in France’s meat supply chain have long militated against terms like “plant-based burger” or “vegan sausage”, claiming that they confuse consumers.

However, over 120 meat-associated names such as “cooked ham”, “poultry”, “sausage” or “bacon” will still be authorised provided that the products do not exceed a certain amount of plant proteins, with percentages ranging between 0.5% and 6%.

Guillaume Hannotin, lawyer for the Proteines France organisation representing makers of vegan and vegetarian alternatives, said the term “plant-based steak” had been in use for more than 40 years.

He argued France’s new decree still contravenes EU regulation on labelling for products which – unlike milk – lack a strict legal definition and can be referred to by terms in popular use.


Saved 46% of original text.

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
78 points (100.0% liked)

World News

22057 readers
88 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.


Guidelines for submissions:

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.


For US News, see the US News community.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS