EU Parliament votes to restrict 'steak' and 'burger' labels to meat only
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/08/eu-parliament-votes-to-restrict-steak-and-burger-labels-to-meat-only_6746230_19.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world453
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Another shitty lobby demand became regulation just like that. Besides, protecting the label „burger“? Really? You know what I‘ll just call them sandwiches from now on. Fuck that.
It's an odd one, because we've had veggie burgers for as long as I can remember.
Exactly. Veggie burgers are waaay older than any "plant based meat" products. Haloumi is at least 500 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if there were haloumi burgers before the word burger existed. And I can't imaging it took long after the word became used for meat sandwiches, someone also used it for a vegetarian variant.
There's at least two more votes at different levels before this becomes regulation.
People don't really understand how EU works
To be fair, the media usually does a real shit job of explaining it.
If they explained things they wouldn't be able to sell panic, fear or anger as easily.
That's true
Meanwhile Brussels city just scrapped the money to shelter homeless when it's freezing
You can still call them burger. You just cannot sell them as burgers. So unless you sell vegan burgers for a living, this does not affect you whatsoever.
I mean, it'll be harder to search for "burger" on my supermarket's website to find vegetarian alternatives to burgers. They'll get more expensive because they have to relabel things. And my EP representatives have to waste their time on this instead of important issues.
Nah fuck that. They‘re just sandwiches anyway. This might not affect me directly but it‘s still bullshit overregulation and should be boycotted because who is to tell where it will end? Next thing you know they prohibit gender speech as well. I hate everything about this.
In some german states they already have prohibit gender speech in public institutions, including schools and universities.
It does affect me to know that my tax money is used by these bunch of fucks to discuss bullshit like that.
My grandma died of anemia because she was unfed in her retirement home but these bunch of privilege motherfuckers have the time to discuss vegan burgers? Bitch please
A lot of companies sell vegan burgers, though.
If they have a line of burgers, some of which have meat in them and some don't, what are they supposed to do? Keep two different brands separately, putting their fish, chicken and bovine burgers under one brand and others under another? Or just ditch the word "burger" altogether?
It's affecting me that I'm paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of crony politicians to chitchat about such bullshit
This stinks of (rotten) meat lobby.
I hope the meat substitute industry comes up with some kind of 'it's not meat' marketing campaign to counter this.
It worked for oat milk. I'm buying "no milk" all the time 😅
NOT M!LK :)
Praise the lord.
A company here just calls everything Salmo'n, Chicke'n and so on, technically it isn't the actual word.
That seems pretty scummy and misleading. I'm not a fan of the restrictive naming Iike in the article, but the name shouldn't try to mislead either.
A burger is more about the form, same even for sausage, steak is more gray area, something like "veggie minced meat" or stuff with "meat" in the name is a no-no imo
Okay, I like it as I am looking for replacements for salmon or chicken. So if they start calling their burger burge'r to circument such rules I wouldn't mind.
I get how similar naming can be useful in knowing what sort of product you're getting and what it can be used to replace, but I dislike more how it is purposefully misleading. Shouldn't be allowed to call it that close to salmon without it containing any salmon. Same for other similar ingredient names where there's a chance of confusion.
A meat product being quirky and inverting the m so it is marketed as w'eat would just be... No.
Well, honestly it would be fucking time they come out with some name that not mimic the meat products name.
Congrats to the meat-farmers and -industry! It shows you are “winning” the game against vegetarians and vegans. Now you can finally stop your usual whining about subsidies and the like - everything solved eh?
Praise the lord
Hah
I'm sorry, but the "green" burgers aren't burgers. It's the same like calling margarine butter.
Yeah "green" burgers don't involve torturing sentient beings.
lol only torture is your anthropomorphism
Non-human animals with brains and central nervous systems are sentient. Your anthropocentrism is showing.
Haha
Keep digging the hole.
Yes they do. The poor beings that have to eat that crap.
Plants are sentient they feel pain.
😑 so torture a bunch of alfalfa, or a bunch of alfalfa and a much larger more sentient cow as well?
I just stated a fact. I didn't share my opinion on veganism. You just established that you aren't against the torturing of sentient beings and that you think life dying in order to support other life is a good thing. That you do infact see some life as inferior to other life. I just wanted to point out your extremely poor choice of words lol
im not sure how far your understanding of biology goes lil bro
Let's say plants can suffer:
Therefore: A vegan always produces less suffering than a vegetarian or omnivore.
And a fruitarian produces less suffering than a vegan , but why stop there?
Wow. This is the state of our education system.
Wow.
They are not, they don't even have a central nervous system.
Citation needed.
It wasn't until the 21st century that we showed fairly conclusively that fish can feel pain. So it seems very unlikely that we have strong evidence that plants do.
Unless you are arguing we shouldn't have had compassion for fish and their suffering up until very recently I think your point supports mine. We do know they respond to stimuli and some root systems form neural like structures so it seems probable. Imagine hooking up pain and suffering tolerance to science and thinking you are a good person ha. Could you even?
You're an idiot
Okay shit sausage chase me to other posts. But you are still a shit sausage lol
Vegan Bullshit Bingo #22
Plants have feelings too
Edit: Getting downvoted for scientific facts.
Manches der Sachen in der Bullshit Bingo sind wirklich Bullshit seitens der Veganer*innen. Sind nicht viele, aber da sind zwei, drei Sachen.
Als fast Vegetarier*in kann ich schon gut nachvollziehen warum Leute vegan werden. Aber es halt auch einiges an Misinfo seitens Veganer*innen z.B. die Sache mit dem Lab, wo Statistiken aus der USA verwendet werden obwohl in Europa eher künstliches Lab gängiger ist.
Ich würde auch nie behaupten, dass alle Veganis immer die Wahrheit sagen. Aber welche Misinfo meinst du denn genau? Über Lab-Statistiken weiß ich nichts, steht das da auf der Seite?
Es sind halt so manche Sachen die halt oft falsch von irgendwelche Moralapostel wiedergegeben werden. Da wird z.B. bzgl. Käse gerne gesagt, dass Kälber geschlachtet werden nur um an tierisches Lab zu kommen um Käse herstellen zu können obwohl bei ca. 80% aller heimischen Käsen künstliches Lab benutzt wird, da diese günstiger und leichter zugänglich ist.
Auch wird gerne gesagt, dass alles Milch aus der unfreiwilligen Schwängerung von Kühen kommt obwohl es reichlich Biobauernhöfe gibt, die keine erzwungene Schwangerschaft machen sondern einen Bullen mit den Kühen auf die Weide stellen sobald die Kühe wieder brünstig werden. Die Zeit zwischen Gebären und Brunst variiert von Tier zu Tier. Bei Kühen ist es etwa vier Wochen. Ziegen zwei Wochen. Schafe sechs Monate.
Wer tierische Produkte gänzlich meiden will, hab ich mit keine Probleme, solange man nicht irgendwelche Peta oder ALF Argumente benutzt die gar nicht stimmen.
Gegen Vegetarismus gibt es kaum Gegenargumente wenn Vegetarismus gewissenhaft eingehalten wird. Gibt aber genug Vegetarier*innen, die sich nicht bewusst sind welche Firmen bei Molkerei und Eierprodukte unnötiges Tierleid verursachen.
That's why they're called veggie burgers, or are you just unfamiliar with how language works? Would you accept a glass of body milk with your breakfast?
They tend to advertise very heavily they are not meat, because they want to be found -specifically - by people looking to purchase things that are not meat. Claiming there's some form of "trickery" afoot is high horseshit
I don't mind if a meat-free burger is called a burger, as long as they make clear there's no meat in it. "Meat-free burger", "vegan burger", I think that's fine.
The same boomers whining about "vegan burgers" also whine about margarine being called margarine instead of butter, all while hating real butter for being "hard to spread and tasting the same".
You're supposed to leave the butter out of the fridge. And tastes really good, unlike margarine.
But margarine literally isn't butter? I've never heard anyone complain about that. If anything, the opposite. Don't hand someone margarine when they asked for butter.
EU parliamentarians are so far up their ass, they can’t even see the big ass VEGAN logo that is on every vegan meat replacement product
So why not call it a vegan patty or something similar. This is ultimately a regional issue as every region will hold meaning of labels differently.
What do you think we should call vegan sausage? And why is it a problem to call it vegan sausage?
Often they're specifically meat replacement products so being able to call it as closely the product they're meant to be replacing as possible is useful for them. Tells the consumer what kind of product it is and so on. Though that same thing can lead consumers to expect a different product to what they're getting.
The expectation matters.
Haha yeah awesome real problems getting solved by serious politicians here, guys! If you can actually get your hands on any real meat without paying an arm and a leg for it what the actual fuck are we doing here lads what the fuck are these fucking politicians doing???
The world is on fire, the economy is in the shitter globally, there are multiple ongoing genocides, facism is on the rise again, and we're wiggling our dicks around talking about whether you can call veggie burgers "burgers"? Are you serious? WHO CARES???
Is this bring your kid to work day and they let the kids do a vote for a change instead as a treat? Is this a joke?? What motherfucker is getting into politics to make sure "hey those damn vegans better not call anything a burger".
These poncy little briefcase-botherers need a hobby or something because this is absolutely the biggest case of dicking around on the job I've ever heard of. Ridiculous. Stupid. A joke. Pathetic. Childish. Vapid. Can we get some adults in the EU Parliament please?
Or.
We could tackle multiple problems at once. Why does it have to be a this-or-that thing?
This is in a very literal way not a problem though. They were just bribed by the meat industry.
I'm paying 50% income taxes to pay for a bunch of cronies to chitchat about this bullcrap. Meanwhile they just scraped the money to shelter homeless people during winter
Because resources must be prioritized. There simply are more pressing matters to tend to.
This is a non-issue and should have the lowest priority as it's pandering to a lobby and will likely result in backfiring because more creative names will pop up, possibly leading to even more acceptance of vegan products 😁
Honestly, coming up with a better name would be great. It would likely help the vegan products as well
I'm totally in favour of solving multiple problems at once.
Personally, I do not view this as a problem. My issue is with the EU Parliament wasting time with this in place of anything that I perceive as an actual problem.
If you think that calling veggie burgers "burgers" is a problem worth their time and effort, more power to you 👍
To me this is also a non problem. But if they can solve it just so they can move on, that’d be great
Voting the way an industry told them to vote is not solving anything. Shouldn't have been considered worthy of a vote at all.
why are they doing this shit when there are so many problems in the world?
because they already participated in those problems.
In reality, it's because the farming lobby is the biggest lobby inside the EU. This is an easy "win" that MEPs can use to get beef farmers to vote for them again.
Same reason CAP will never be reformed.
Welcome to the European Union. Solving non-issues is what they do all day.
This is just stupid. Make it clear the product doesn't have meat in it. It's not that hard. Surely people can't be confused by veggie burger vs burger?
Current labelling is correctly understood by 70% of sampled population according to the article. That's lower than I would have expected.
You underestimate how stupid the average person is.
As clearly shown in this thread. Sooo many deeply stupid comments. The vast majority agreeing with this change, general anti-vegan idiocy, and trolls. I don't think I've ever seen a comment section for something even remotely related to veganism without shitty and dumb people like that, it's like they sit and scour the whole Internet with every minute of their time, ready to jump in and act like children who got their lollipop stolen. They're pathetic people.
I went vegetarian two years ago and cannot for the life of me fathom how one cannot differentiate... That said, I'm from Sweden and products in other countries might be marketed differently so I wouldn't be able to say, but still.
Only issue I often come across here in Sweden is that different companies use "veggie" differently. Some use it only for vegan products, others use it for vegetarian products and it's not always clear which is which without reading the ingredients list. I've accidentally bought stuff with milk, cheese and eggs in them many times because it wasn't clearly written anywhere and it's easy to miss stuff when you're at the store and reading the (often long) ingredient list of several things while in a hurry. It happens even more often with family and friends who aren't vegan and buy stuff they usually don't when they make food for you. In those cases I still eat the food, just point out the non-vegan ingredient(s) the product has and ask them to just look at the ingredients list when buying and/or even calling me so I can help them.
But allergens like milk and egg are highlighted in the ingredient list https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/foretagande-regler-kontroll/regler-for-livsmedelsforetag/information-markning-och-pastaenden/allergeninformation
Yeah but imagine you want to buy some factory meat and realise at home that they didn't even torture animals for the patty that you bought? The horror.
I mean imagine the confusion the other way around. Some scummy company was misleading you into thinking your buying a veggie patty but instead you bought a (meat) steak. Obviously nobody is happy about a product misleading them like that.
I'd go a step further and require labeling meat as having come from an animal. So the source of food would have to precede the term, such as "cow burger", "pig burger". Can do the same for milk. Make all dairy farmers put "cow milk" rather than just "milk". It's way less confusing that way. Include a warning that the product contains lactose. Instead of a logo to signify vegetarian products, make one to signify animal products. Use the silhouette of a horse or something.
It's an excuse. A bullshit one. The real reason for this "problem" being addressed is that the meat industry is threatened, and lobbies hard to fight the plant based industry.
But they will lose, eventually.
Never underestimate what people can get confused about. People will also still buy veggie burgers expecting them to have meat, after they would be relabeled eventually.
I've seen vegetarian minced meat type thing that had it like this
^veggie^ minced meat ^product^
Seemed kinda silly, you'd think being a veggie thing would've been a value add selling point
Fucking idiots. Almost nobody is able to decipher the ingredients including E numbers, but people are confused by "burger"
this has nothing to do with people being confused, and everything with meat industry being worried about their profits
I know. Tönnies sei dank
Finally EU is back innovating! Oh wait 🤦♂️
another useless legislation, like how in the US, klobaucher wanted to do a "flag" legislation.
Seems a bit strange to expect EU Parliament to be an innovative body
I'm sure this critical decision will help us.
Veggie burgers have been around since the 1940s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veggie_burger
The Morningstar ones are damn good too. I think they're black bean based.
Ayyy morningstar
Much better than the Impossible to eat burger.
It’s only a burger if it comes from the municipality of Cheeseberg.
Can we change the title to “meat industry has been nagging about this non issue for years now, so the babies are finally getting their non issue resolved?”
Ffs sell your product but don’t be a bitch about that tiny speck of competition.
It's not that tiny anymore. The number of people choosing non-meat options is growing faster and faster as people realize that meat is expensive and bad for your health but the plant based alternatives are cheaper and good for you.
Also bad for your health in the long run, because meat is heating up the atmosphere and outcompetes nature that would otherwise store CO2.
yes but lets not pretend impossible burgers are a health food. they're great but just like cow burgers i wouldn't recommend eating them as a staple of your diet
All the vegans and vegetarians I know don't eat impossible burgers very often at all, they're more into actual vegan and vegetarian food.
pretending they are a health food is their marketing strategy. people switch to vegan because it's perceived to be healthier.
in 5-10 years studies will show it's bad for you and people will move away from it and meat will seen as the 'healthy' choice.
everything in food/nutrition is a fad.
People aren't changing to vegetarian or vegan diets because of studies. They're changing because they try it and they find themselves feeling better. The main barrier to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle has always been the bias against ethnic dishes that often were vegetarian or vegan. And all of the European or American style dishes were all meat centered. There has been trend of people becoming more comfortable with a less European an American style diet. A lot of this actually can be chalked up to youtube. People aren't stuck consuming only one corporately cultivated perspective on food prep and recipes. There is now a diversity that has never existed before.
This is going to backfire in a major way for them. Once we come up with new names for the vegan stuff that are generally accepted, the old stuff will look decidedly outdated.
did it work for milk? it won't backfire.
they know what they're doing - they're trying to create an artificial distance between meat and modern plant alternatives. Can't blame them for trying but the government should not be so happy to do their bidding.
How fucking stupid are your customers if "almost 70%" can work out that a vegan sausage doesn't contain meat?
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” -- George Carlin
70% is pretty good, sadly.
But honestly, the vegan sausages and steaks are not sausages and stakes, even if they are still ultra-processed like their meat counterparts. They really should invent different names that are used for these products.
Why?
I want something vegan that looks and tastes like sausage. I want to have an easy time finding such a product in the store. I look for a product that says "I'm basically a sausage, but vegan". I buy a vegan sausage.
What's the problem with that?
How would they even define a sausage anyway, meat content? Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product - probably more than most sausages actually given how much filler they put in them.
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to "emulsified high fat offal tubes" to more accurately describe them?
And blood sausage is a very good example to show that "sausage" is an established appendix to show the shape of something, while specifying what it's made of with a term beforehand. Pork sausage. Beef sausage. Turkey sausage. Blood sausage. This works so well that I can invent words of artificial things and still convey what I mean by that: Paper sausage. Ice sausage. Cloth sausage. Glass sausage. ...Chickpea sausage. Broccoli sausage. Bean sausage.
It's a non-brainer. The legislators are being deliberately obtuse here.
Also traditionally it would've been in an intestine, but they've been making other sorts of casings for meat-based sausages for a while anyway, so that argument against plant based sausages is dead in the water too IMO
Where do you live that blood sausage has more animal product than regular sausages (where the filler is often bone mass and such)? Blood sausage filler where I come from is usually barley groats (or some other format of barley. Barley is really universal apparently).
Picked out a random one they sell here. Contents: barley groats, "food blood" (19%), pork rind, pork (8%), roasted onion, pork fat, salt, various spices
These are generally listed in rough order of importance, so blood sausage is basically more barley groats than animal products.
Now for comparison, the cheapest smoked sausage out there (the sandwich sausage variety, not grill or oven). Contents: chicken meat mass (39%), pork (18%), pork fat, water, cheese (6%), various shit you don't even want to think or know about.
It's utterly cheap shit (the chicken meat mass of course includes shit like soft-ish bones ground up, etc), but even this is more animal-y than blood sausages.
The EU document specifically mentions that blood based products counts as meat, so blood sausage is fine.
That's fucking stupid. Blood isn't meat, it's blood. How can something liquid be meat?
In the end it's a legal document and the terms are defined for the purpose of the regulation, not necessarily how the terms are used in daily life.
Is milk and honey also a meat product? they are stored/produced in the animal too, like blood. Can I call it sausage if I fill a casing with them?
It'd be ironic to be able to call "sausage" to something that tastes and feels nothing like a sausage just because it happens to come from an animal.. but being unable to call sausage to something that does look and taste like a sausage but happens to not come from an animal.
Hot take, I don't think legal documents should get a pass to redefine words and use them differently than how they're used in daily life. I'm sure they do it on purpose specifically to make it harder for laymen to parse those types of documents, which is stupid.
It would be easier and clearer to write this regulatory document using common parlance, and then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
Nah, this would hurt meat lobbyist' feelings.
I am all for allowing vegan sausages to just be called sausage. But I am not the biggest fan of vegan steaks getring the same treatment. Mostly just because a steak is by definition a slice of meat. Patties are fine since they are just ground minced stuff made into a certain shape kinda like sausages.
Don't really care about steaks, but burgers, sausages and many others are really established with their veggie and vegan variants. It's completely nonsensical to ban them.
So we should call them vegetarian protein cylinders instead of sausages?
Cool still not buying dead animal
This is what seems crazy to me, surely no one is changing what they buy based on this and who is really so dumb that they were confused by the vegan sausage not containing meat?
And even if, no one dies of eating a vegan sausage by mistake.
Not true. I made my racist uncle eat a vegan sausage once and he was almost offended to death
Generally no, but food allergies could cause death depending on the vegan alternative contents. Have a severe allergy to wheat, seitan is a no-go. Have a severe allergy to legumes, chickpeas and bean altertanives are a no-go.
However, I've never seen vegan alternatives not clearly labeled as vegan or meat alternative is some very obvious way. And the people I know with allergies severe enough to cause severe reactions read the ingredients carefully of everything they buy. And ask what's in things before eating something prepared by somebody else.
I doubt it'll actually go through.
They're clearly labeled "veggie", "vegitarian" or "vegan", and consumers understand those labels to mean, at minimum, no meat.
"Sausage", I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage. I don't agree, but I can understand the argument being made.
"Burger", however. Is distinctly different than "hamburger", in fact, we often substitute the prefix to fit whatever it is. (Not that hamburgers are made of ham, i know it comes from hamburg) Such as, "fish-burger" or "chicken-burger", so why would "veggie-burger" be any more confusing than "fish-burger"?
I don't; the defining feature of sausage isn't that it's meat, it's the fact that it's stuffed in a tube. If people want to grind up veggies and stuff them in a tube, why would that not be a veggie sausage?
Salad dildo
"Sausage", is a traditional name of minced meat stuffed into a sleeve, It exists in numerous cultures all over the world, and the principle is the same. So an argument could be made, that "Sausage" is inherently viewed as a meat product by default. And could be confusing for consumers.
Again, I would also disagree with that argument, but that doesn't mean it can't be made. Just because we disagree with something doesn't mean it can't be made.
I've never said something can't be a "Veggie sausage", like I said... It's clearly labeled "Veggie"
It's not just meat usually though.
It's a mix of mostly meat, some flour or even vegetables (like onion) and seasoning. Sometimes you can even have cheesy sausages.
Some sausages here are as low as 11% of meat. Then again there is "product that's comparable to meat" for a more significant portion, but rest flour and other things. You just can't call minced ligaments and fat "meat" here but anyway I think sausages are more about the way they're made and their shape than being made of meat
I am well aware. You don't have to convince me of what I already think. I just said an argument can be made given the long lineage of the name "Sausage" and its respective local counterpart.
Regardless. Just to be super clear. As far as I'm concerned, EU can fuck off with this one, it's not something that needs to be regulated on an EU level. Each member is perfectly capable of deciding themselves what can and can not be called "Sausage".
This is just France trying to throw its weight around to appease their own farmers. Why they wanted to involve EU in it is beyond me.
Language is descriptive not prescriptive.
If "veggie sausage" conveys what I mean, then it's perfectly acceptable language.
The only reason there's even a question about this is because the meat industry is panicking.
If its just "sausage" alone I think there is an expectation that it contains about 10% Legally Meat™ though. Otherwise it should have some addition to its name to show it is something else.
I thought you could stuff anything into a bun shaped piece of bread and call it a burger.
Its not always clearly labeled tho. Last year my brother took me to a burger joint in Minneapolis and only after I thought the burger tasted very weird did I learn that it was an all vegan burger joint. Not complaining, but it should be clearly labeled what youre getting, IMO.
It should always be the case, even for places serving meat products. Alpha-gal syndrome is on the rise due to exploding tick populations, so when a restaurant advertises "gravy" it would be nice to know what kind it is. Another frustrating one is sausages - so many poultry or veggie sausages still use pig-based casings and either ignore it completely or list the ingredient as "collagen" and expect people to understand what that implies (collagen casing is almost always pork).
Cool so lets just put a label on anything that isn't vegan. Problem solved.
You're just making a really terrible, bad faith argument, for the sake of arguing, when the guy just wanted to share a situation where he was a bit confused as to what he was getting.
I would just enjoy having animal abuse products be labeled clearly but sure, you know me better than I know myself I guess?
I don't think anyone is oblivious to the fact that burgers by default contains animal product. But I'm sure you'll be the one to prove that wrong.
I think I know the place you're talking about. I took my daughter there because she is vegetarian, but I can imagine that being offputting if you didn't know ahead of time.
What a great Democratic organ taking care of the true problems of the days /s
It's not like they can't do several things at once. Small things add up.
Bullshit. I'm not paying 50% taxes so a bunch of idiot can whine about "fake meat".
Hallo, Steuerprüfer? Dieser Kommentar hier.
How are you paying 50% taxes lol especially towards the EU
I don't have a company car
huh?
That's not how it works. You don't pay 50% taxes to have that.
I understand you think it's not something you'd like the EU to spend money on, but this whole "I pay loads of taxes For This?!" is just making the discussion become quite low level IMO.
Yeah well I remember you're a genocide supporter so...
Still higher than you
I'm not, you are probably upset because I didn't buy into your tankie crap or some other conspiracy theory 100%.
You seem to be a very very angry person.
True, but of all the things to focus on, this is utterly ridiculous.
Nothing is perfect, and if this is the worst thing about the EU then it's kind of good IMO.
Same tact the meat lobbies used in the US.
Idiots.
I'm a meat eater and I don't even see much point in this ruling. Basically all the plant-based steak or burger alternatives I've seen have been clearly labeled as such. Stores usually separate them from meat-based products anyway, so that vegans and vegetarians could more easily find what they're looking for.
I'm a french vegetarian living in France, and I couldn't care less about this decision, the people arguing for either side are really wasting their time on this, who cares how it's called honestly ? As long as the products are available in store and the labeling is different, which it always is, and very clearly: veggie based product try their best to make sure vegetarian and vegans will identify them easily and will know without a doubt that it is not meat. Who care that it is called a "burger", "steak" or something else ?
I care that the government cares (or more specifically that it was bribed to do so by lobby groups)
Vegetarian or not, you should care about this. Propping up the meat and dairy industry is not in the interests of the public. This move is part of an agenda by the meat and dairy industry to deceive the public into thinking there's something "natural" about the modern meat processing industry. It's bullshit and if we had a government that actually worked in our interests instead of that of the fat cats, it would be the meat and dairy industry being forced to change their labelling, to highlight to the public the real costs of meat consumption.
Yea I'm paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of cronies circlejerking about this crap
I'd like to add that "I know who cares" my question is rethoric, those who care are idiots wasting parliament's time.
Don't really care either way, but I shall point and laugh.
You should care that people you're paying taxes to are wasting time discussing and voting on special interest nonsense like this.
I should, and normally I would, but right now french politics is so crazy, this particular issue seems very low stakes in comparison.
Burger? Is the bun made of meat too?
Fuck I wish it was
There was a burger in two chicken patties instead of bread being sold as a keto-friendly alternative at KFC
Sounds over the top but also something I want to try
Good to see the parliament tackling the most pressing issues.
Seems a bit idiotic to me. So what's a burger with veggie substitutes supposed to be called? Vegger?
I’m really glad that we don’t have more serious problems to deal, than this.
Wait till they learn how long peanut butter has existed
Freedom, baby. Live your best life.
Should name products made from animals as they are: spherical gassed pig after a short, miserable life without ever seeing daylight. Or: salty fat from methane burping cows that could also have fed their killed off offspring.
Who eats suet and why have you made it salty? I'd think "salty fat" would be closer to bacon.
It's a favorite vegan pastime to invent the most disgustable description of animal based foods possible.
Well I'm sorry to say but I think you just won't be able to come up with anything that would deter someone.
Common sense to stop meat consumption also has not worked sufficiently until now. Any ideas for a better strategy? Or just plunge forward into an inhabitable planet, discarding any responsibility, mistreating animals as we go?
Nice strawman.
What's it like, living in a black and white world?
Literally no idea. You can't see cause and effect, can you? No sense of empathy neither. Ah well, you're not alone, unfortunately. For the moment.
Again, black and white.
There's no arguing a moron who keeps pretending it's black and white. I'll prove to you just how asinine your view is: my brother is a hunter. They cull roe deer to keep the population in check, since humans have been the apex predator in these parts for thousands of years.
If they didn't cull them, the population would destroy the entire ecological system, which would lead to all the deer dying, eventually. Not to mention increased deer accidents on roads, killing more people.
So while you like to pretend that death is horrible and to be avoided at all costs if you can, but then end up advocating practices which would lead to suffering and death, just indirectly.
Ie if you're put into a trolley problem, you're the type to just stand there without pulling the lever which would save several life at the cost of one, because "murdering is wrong and I'd bw actively killing the other person myself". Meaning that you put your own ideas and the sense of personality you have above the lives of others. Not just better as ideas, but you'd actually stand there watching the trolley roll over people you could've saved, but chose not to, so that you can just blame others.
And you talk of empathy, rofl. Maybe start by trying to understand your own thoughts/views.
Oh and eating the resulting meat from the culling is fucking delicious AND moral.
What would you do with sheep amd cows btw? They require people. Sheep have to be shorn. If you don't shear your sheep, that's tantamount to animal abuse. So we end up getting wool, but you don't think it's moral to use that. Why?
So if you think we can't keep sheep or cows anymore, and they can't be released into the wild because they are domesticated species. So then stop letting them breed at all, meaning that in a generation, they'd be completely gone.
So you end up advocating for genocide of entire species with this black and white view you have.
You know all the produce you eat is protected from pests and other animals? Your avocado isn't "cruelty-free" dude, and eating avocados when they're not even grown on the same continent, have them flown to you? But that's moral again, because you don't have to personally think about death you're indirectly causing.
So yeah
First time ever!
When will they ban the name of the Hungarian dessert "Bird Milk" for being made of cow milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and eggs, instead of milk from birds?
Milk comes from women's breasts.
Legally, it should be named cow water.
Bovine drippins
Calves drink
Investing time and money into producing meat alternatives for the growing market share of vegans and vegetarians? Hell no, better throw our money on a dumpster fire of lobbyism and denial.
Just out of spite i will from now on refer to milk as cow drink.
Milk is filtered blood
Are veggie patties really sold as "Burgers" in the EU? A Burger is technically a dish, it deppends what you put in it, as far as I understand. You can have an Egg burger, or a turd burger.
Fuck the meat industry, btw. If it's dying - time to get a "real" job. Free market and all.
Thank you EU for working on the things that truly matter! Not since the fascists "tramezzino" have we had such useful policing of words.
On the upside, now I can confidently avoid anything labelled burger and sausage.
OMG you're right. This is backdoor piecemeal vegan labeling.
This give me an idea. Maybe we can actually get universal vegan labeling if we couch it as a WARNING LABEL. Careful! This is vegan!
That would be an amazing law to see passed.
"Its maddening! They've even got vegan apples nowadays. Something as ancient and simple as apples and they've gone and made them all vegan," they will say.
Did you know that there is vegan food hiding unlabelled in your supermarket? Many popular brands and products are so-called 'accidentally vegan'. Your favourite cookies might be sneaking vegan food into your family's home. Demand that lawmakers legislate this vegan menace with clear labeling of all vegan products!
Well.. the restriction is for vegan food not being labeled as burger/sausage, but it does not legally prevent someone from calling something a non-burger or non-sausage and still have meat in it.
🤦🏻♂️
Cutting red tape, huh?
Does anyone have a link to who voted how? I wanna see which MEPs to be angry at.
Would also love to see a visual representation, but I believe this (point
2.222.19) should be the result in text form (please correct me if I'm wrong).Point 2.19 355 vs 247
Wow, more than half of CDU/CSU voted against it including Axel fucking Voss.
You sure it's 2.22? Awfully many yay-sayers among Eurogreens.
Another comment pointed out it's 2.19, I'll edit my comment.
It's going to be fun to watch how this completely backfires on these idiots. People are not at all confused when they pick up plant-based meat alternatives. And they're going to be even less confused now that those meat alternatives don't use those bullshit terms. It's going to be even easier to choose a meat-free option in the EU going forward. Which is clearly what people want.
I can't wait to hear these whiny ass farmers bitching and whining that nobody's buying there death meat.
From the eu Parliament document: *3. ‘Meat products’ means processed products resulting from the processing of meat or from the further processing of such processed products, so that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has the characteristics of fresh meat. Names that fall under Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that are currently used for meat products and meat preparations shall be reserved exclusively for products containing meat.
These names include, for example:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2025-0161_EN.html Use ctrl+f "burger" to find it in the text.
This not only affects vegetarian food, but also salmon steak for example. It's a populist political move that doesn't seem to be backed up by any linguistic science, as if mystery sausages haven't been a thing for centuries. As long as it looks like a sausage, it is a sausage imo. It's also not law yet, the member states still have to approve those amendements.
Ps, this gave me an idea for possible vegetarian branding: names like "not a burger" seem to still be allowed, so a line of foodstuffs called "not a sausage" etc might be fun.
That's definitely gonna happen, there's already a plant drink brand named "this is not m*lk" (including the censoring) in Germany, as here a similar ban is already in effect for the word "milk" to exclude soy milk / oat milk / ...
They should just change one or two letters or make them phonetically similar. Such as borgir, sossich, wurzt and stek.
Edit: Been having issues with Lemmy today. That's probably why it triple posted my comment.
In Germany I've seen some vegan restaurants replace some letter with "v" for vegan.
Like "vurst" instead of "wurst" (sausage) or "vleish" instead of "fleish" (meat).
Which is really funny because soy milk, oat milk, and almond milk have existed as such for literally hundreds of years.
And etymologically cow's milk actually takes its name from those, not the other way around.I was apparently misremembering something. It's still a fact though that the word milk has been associated with alternate plant based versions for literal centuries.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
Source? That seems unlikely
Yeah I was misremembering something saw at some point. The other point still stands though.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
Looking forward to "extruded logs" hitting the shelves
Where are you getting this from? In the document you linked they define meat as "edible parts of the animals" and I can't find any wording in here that would exclude fish from being meat.
I mean.. if they meant "meat" literally as flesh/muscle fiber, then eggs would not meet the definition either.
However, wouldn't that definition also technically mean that milk can also be categorized as a meat product? Same for honey. Someone also mentioned peanut butter in another comment, is butter considered meat as well since it often comes from milk?
And what about broth/stock? ..chicken stock is common, does that mean that now it should be considered a meat product and you can no longer have vegetable stock?
Afaik fish is not considered meat, definitely not in colloquial language. With a quick search I found another EU article which mentions meat and fish, and they list meat and fishery products as being different things: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/hygiene-rules-for-food-of-animal-origin.html
What that article includes under meat: "Meat, including domestic ungulates (bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine species); poultry and lagomorphs (farmed birds, rabbits, hares and rodents); farmed and wild game; minced meat, meat preparations and mechanically separated/recovered meat; and meat products."
I found a moment to look up that edible part that you found: "For the purposes of this part, ‘meat’ means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, " So no, they do not define meat as the edible parts of the animals, they define meat as the edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I etc. You can't just ignore parts of a definition.
1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 is:
"Meat" means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8, including blood.
1.2. "Domestic ungulates" means domestic bovine (including Bubalus and Bison species), porcine, ovine and caprine animals, and domestic solipeds.
1.3. "Poultry" means farmed birds, including birds that are not considered as domestic but which are farmed as domestic animals, with the exception of ratites.
1.4. "Lagomorphs" means rabbits, hares and rodents.
1.5. "Wild game" means:
—
wild ungulates and lagomorphs, as well as other land mammals that are hunted for human consumption and are considered to be wild game under the applicable law in the Member State concerned, including mammals living in enclosed territory under conditions of freedom similar to those of wild game; and
—
wild birds that are hunted for human consumption.
1.6. "Fanned game" means farmed ratites and farmed land mammals other than those referred to in point 1.2.
1.7. "Small wild game" means wild game birds and lagomorphs living freely in the wild.
1.8. "Large wild game" means wild land mammals living freely in the wild that do not fall within the definition of small wild game.
Cause the world isnt burning and you can spend time to worry about this shite
How quickly Lemmy turns on the EU when they do something you don't like. "Vegan burger" doesn't tell me what's in it. Could be fucking sawdust.
To support Netherlandish and Danish pig farm dynasties.
Easy to get behind the reasoning behind their batshit behind this.
I honestly would have thought it were mainly the German farmers. They bitch and whine all day long while sitting on acres upon acres of land that is worth millions, while destroying the ecosystem, contaminating ground water, emitting fine particles, destroying roads without paying taxes for them, etc. Bunch of entitled cunts.
Germany actually opposed this.
No way, really?
I wonder what this means the things like tuna steaks
Steakn't
Overpaid morons. You could put them out of work right now and it would only be beneficial.
Sausage will always remain a form. It is even more apparent in German you dumb Kackwürste.
Last I checked it included 'sausage' too, but that's a shape??
It's not a shape, it's always been a meat product. It comes from the Latin salsicus which means "seasoned with salt".
In Danish it's definitely a shape, so... Which underlines the fact that this sort of legislation is pretty ridiculous in a multilingual society like the EU.
Please also remember, as per Saussure, that for the language user only the present exists. Etymologies are curious facts at best and doesn't necessarily mean anything for current usage.
I'll be up to each country to implement the rules so everyone can account for their own language.
I see where you're coming from, but I think that is quite sad. That actually gives some credibility to the argument that the names of traditional foods should to be protected to some degree.
Language is the only truly democratic system we have, despite the best efforts of e.g. Academie Française the language develops as the speakers want it to, on average.
This legislation seems symbolic at best, and like a nonstarter at worst. And I dobt think it makes anyone's life better....
Yeah, think it's quite silly that the EU is wasting time on this, but here we are.
In the end it's more about labeling than language anyway. No one is banned from calling anything they want to a "burger". You can't just put it in the label when you want to sell it, and I think that is fair enough.
I don't know man, for me 'burger' also refers to the shape. Fry up a lovely mushroom or whatever and add it instead of the meat and I would call it a burger still.
Yes, 'sausage' is definitely used more for the description of a shape than for what out contains. It would make more sense for 'burger' to be used to describe the shape too, i.e. a synonym for the word 'patty', which makes it sound too close to 'pat', as in 'what cows leave in fields'.
The Dictionary Gatekeepers should also add the word 'sausagenous' to mean sausage-shaped, mostly because it's pleasing to say.
The claim is that people can be confused about what the product is if the meat and non-meat products are called by such universally descriptive names. I find this argument specious as all the non-meat stuff I see has some variation of ”meat-free" on the packaging in large and distinct text, so what they're suggesting is that meat-eaters are illiterate. Not sure that's the huge gotcha the lobbyists think it is, TBH.
I'm making a veggie sandwich.
That's it, I am calling the food naming convention police
Finally, a benefit of Brexit
Oh – care what you write! A sandwich as designed by the late Lord Sandwich himself is a slice of salted beef stacked between two slices of bread. Calling some vegan abomination "sandwich" is an insult to British cooking traditions. Brits are not amused if you insult their tradition. Don't risk not amusing the mighty Britons!
/s, just in case.
Very well, I'm making a veggie bread stack then. I call it, the vregdstidge! Or the Veggstidge!
Meanwhile, if it contains 5% percent meat, they can still call them sausages and burger...
I'd argue that if a hamburger is not made in Hamburg, it should not be able to be named anything better than "sparkling patty disher"
IIRC they suggested "tube" instead of "sausage". So I guess we are now renaming them to tube dogs.
You tube!
2025: You Tube is now a product available from both Google and Soylent Green.
Meanwhile they just scrapped the money for below zero temperature homeless shelter.
Eurocrats don't pay taxes
https://youtu.be/fyleI2p-JMY
"Steek and Bergers"?
Seems like a relatively pro-consumer policy for so many people to be upset about it. They're not banning Beyond burgers or mushroom steak. It's still going to taste the same and have the same distribution network.
They just have to alter the label. In the US a "slider", "whopper", "quarter pounder", and "baconator" are among the most popular burgers and not one of them needs the word burger in it's marketing.
Sure, it's not really solving a problem, but it's ensuring more informative labeling. Proprietary phone charging cables weren't a real problem either, but it felt like everyone was glad when the EU standardized it.
So annoying, how is calling vegan meat misleading??? It's fricking handy!!!! I just want to know the vegan or vegetarian alternative for bacon in my meal... How the hell do I know if these shredded soy pieces, extra salt, or pink broccoli smoky tempeh taste like bacon?
Good only cucumber shaped meats can be called sausage!
The gods knows the horrors that would fall upon humanity if plant based foods could be called the same as plant shaped meats.
Alot of people in the comments griping but it's not hard to label a veggie patty a "veggie patty" or a "vegan patty" or a "mushroom patty" or to refer to the sandwich it winds up being a part of a "sandwich" instead of a "burger".
It also isn't hard to call things you put on yours feet made of rubber "rubber shoes" if calling it "rubber boots" is banned, because apparently boots are reserved for things made of leather now. Sure it is not hard, it just doesn't make any fucking sense. It does however make things harder, if I go to a web shop and can't find the boots I'm looking for, because they had to rename the product to a name that doesn't describe it as precisely.
Just let me order my veggie burger in peace, without having to double check what kind of "sandwich" I'm buying.
You know what's hard? Paying 50% income tax to pay for eurocrats to chitchat about bullcrap like this
I have always wondered why the meat free products always try to pretend to be meat products. Feels like its limiting factor in what plant based food could be. Make new and exciting things, and maybe people will be more likely to try them. Cos you if want a burger, youre just going to get a proper burger. But if you fancy something different, maybe a (insert original vegan dish here) is something people would be open to trying, without the limiting factor, which is usually "Its ok, but it doesnt taste like...". Stop trying to make it taste like something else, and just focus on making it taste good in its own right.
Fucking hell, you people are weird as fuck about a strangers random wondering.
You're looking at a specific niche within vegetarian / vegan products and argue that the aim of that specific niche (imitating meat) applies to all of the products? There are lots of those. But I don't want to eat cereal with water, hence "oat milk" makes sense if you don't want to contribute to animal exploitation. I don't know why it's so hard to understand for some people that you might like the taste of something yet don't agree with the ethics behind it and then being this non-argument.
Except that oat have not milk.
"oat juice" would not seems to bad as an alternative, for example. And the same applies to others vegan substitute of the milk.
It's not juice because juice needs to be 100% fruit extract without additives, not even water, so that certainly isn't juice. The question is, how would you call something that looks like milk, tastes like milk (there is no universal milk taste anyways as it tastes different or mammal and their feed) and is used in the same circumstances for the same things as milk?
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it really helpful to go "ehm actually this isn't a duck"? What is the point of such a distinction?
Not sure, I think that there must be a minimum quantity of fruit, but I am not sure about the fact that you cannot add water, else you could not have a variety of fruit juices, like apricot, peach and similar.
"Oat extract" comes to mind, for example, if we want to keep it short, but I am sure that a marketing team can come up with better ideas.
The point is that it is not milk, it still is a vegetable extract. But I don't really think that oat (or any other plant based) milk taste like real milk, I've tasted all of them (family problems) and I can assure you that you cannot trick anybody to drink oat milk thinking it is real milk.
Then ok, these vegetable "milks" have their uses and for people who cannot drink real milk they can be a good option.
Except that it is a vegetable.
Because its NEVER going to be the thing you want it to be. So instead of trying to fool yourself, just embrace new things. Are you really so fucking weak minded that need food shaped and styled like burgers just to eat it???
Great job missing the point
Take a look at the account
I feel that way about the veggie patties a job I worked used to sell. No attempt to copy the flavor or texture of beef, they were just doing their own thing. Sometimes I'd actually be in the mood for one.
I went vegetarian a couple years ago. Those substitutes made the transition a lot easier. Theres something about the flavor profile and texture thats familiar and enjoyable. The quality of meat alternatives has gotten a lot better over the last few years.
Veggie burgers have been around since the 1940s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veggie_burger
Why do you give a shit what people like to eat without abusing animals? Let us eat things that look how we want it - it does not hurt your need of abusing animals.
Don't feed the troll with veggie burgers
Only beef should be burgers, chicken is sandwiches.
Super dumb, very American english take. In Australia anything you put in a burger bun is a burger.
Beef burger ✅
Chicken burger ✅
Mushroom burger ✅
Halloumi burger ✅
Veggie burger ✅
What if there's no bread? Is it a still a sandwich? Same with the beef
Bread is irrelevant. The patty makes the burger.
Evidence: You can order a McDonald burger without buns.
I'm asking because of chicken then it's a sandwich (what the person I'm replying to said). But sandwich has to have bread, unlike burger.
So either in missing something, or it makes no sense
Why would vegans want things named after meat products? Hmmmmmmm.
What do vegans even have to do with this? This stuff is marketed at the average family.
Isn't that a good thing? Pretty sure it is well understood 'plant based meat' is absolutely terrible branding, Like extremely bad like what in the genuine actual fuck did you think was going to happen. You should recognize imitation branding as harmful to the cause. Oh is an entire ass industry protecting itself from imitation? You really need to question what are you doing when authentic labeling on food is something you are against.
"Plant based meat" might not be the best name, but this means you can't have a "vegetarian burger" on your menu in a restaurant any more.
You have 5 types of burger and then a "vegetarian sandwich in a round bun". It is 100% stupid, and 200% a move by the meat lobby to suppress competition. They claim it is to make sure consumers are not confused but it will have completely the opposite effect.
"Steak" I can kind of understand but "Burger" and "sausage" are a way to prepare and present food and not about the actual meat content. Fuck everybody that voted for this with a kackwurst (shit-sausage) but that word is now also illegal unless you are shiting meat...
"Burger" and "sausage" are now, for good or worse, synonymous of a certain things more than a way to prepare and present food.
What?
"""200% a move by the meat lobby to suppress competition"""
Buddy the decision to imitate meat was to suppress competition you are just choosing sides of one rich asshole over the other. You are not moral. You could be but you don't seem to understand two wrongs don't make a right.
Im not you buddy, dude.
How is making a new product to compete with an existing product in an existiert category supressing competition? That's the definition of competition! And burger is a word that has been used for a long time to mean things that don't include meat. Veggie burgers are not new. They are not even from this millennia.
Let us iterate on the point the point here. You want incorrect food labeling. I want correct food labeling. If the plant-pulp industry didn't build itself on mimicry there would have been nothing the meat industry could have done about their naming. Fixing the world is far more complex than a basic concept extrapolated over entirety of society so how fucking anyone thought plant-pulp calling itself meat would fucking solve absolutely anything is beyond all reason. I buy shit because it calls itself plant pulp I don't buy shit they says it is imitation meat. Meat is gross how is imitating it a good idea from the people trying to reduce its usage. If plant pulp advertised itself as complimentary to burgers and even skip the meat this can stand on it's own there would be no problem, plant pulp would filter into everyones diets offsetting meat usage and for a lot of people an option to replace meat. That is not just hindsight plant pulp specifically positioned itself the way it did to appeal to a certain kind of person while having the opposite effect on another certain type of person. It is specifically divisive and in this world fuck that.
So long as it's clear that it an imitation.. how is that harmful? There is no chance anyone is confused whether it's meat or not, these products usually have a big sticker telling you it's vegan as well. I've never seen a product that tried to hide that it's not meat, they literally advertise with it.
What an absolute joke this decision is. The whole point is to provide an alternative to meat, this is so clearly lobbying to protect the holy meat industry.
The joke was imitation meat branding. Anyone could have anticipated the problems calling plant pulp meat instead of it's own name like no one has a problem with Tofu and it is often used to replace meat. It was arrogance that ignored the foreseen consequences of imitation branding one of the globes biggest industries.
The justification seems to be 'the meat industry will be right' seemingly acknowledging wrongdoing.
all the poor people getting swindled by the fake meat industry, so sad
You must be extremely privileged if that's the hill you want to die on lmao
Are you sure you are using that right? Did someone say this to you recently and now you are using it liberally while not fully grasping what justifies such a thing? Because sharing an opinion on lemmy is exact same privilege you have. Acting like you are entitled to imitate an entire industry instead of standing on your own feet...? I can see why someone said this to you recently.
"Imitate an entire industry" it says VEGAN on the package you dumb idiot.
It is called imitation meat you shit sausage