Seems a bit idiotic to me. So what’s a burger with veggie substitutes supposed to be called? Vegger?
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.
The point is to protect the meat industry throughout Europe from the growing interest in veggie options. This is why vegan movements are screwed, “disgruntled farmers” will just get their governments to back them up because they rather lobby for the same old than change.
It’s not much, but if, say, you are a fast food chain named Burger Queen, you might remove vegan options altogether because your very name can get you sued for offering anything that looks like a burger but isn’t. Other fast food chains also have to consider whether simply eliminating the option with a black strip than coming up with a whole new category for them. It’s an intimidation tactic that reflects the growing shift in political composition of the parties that make up the EU.
This is EU-wide, not just how good your local options are.
Also, this would otherwise be an open door to degrade your meat-eating products. In Denmark (and I guess EU), we’d been fighting for “cheese” to only be made of 100% cheese, or “juice” being 100% fruits. If you start to allow some of these ultra-processed foods being labeled as something vaguely like meat, everyone will suffer from falling food quality, as these products will sneak their way in.
I’m all for deliberate labeling separating artificial and adulterated products that deviate from the intent of the name. Juice that has a bunch of sugar water added shouldn’t be called just juice. Call it a “drink” and slap a marketing “With Real Apple Juice!” on it if you want fake + juice instead of 100% juice.
I think that can be accomplished by rules like, say, having to have the words “plant-based” clearly visible next to the word “burger” in a legible font at an equivalent size. And if it contains any actual meat, then it has to say something like “40% real meat” in an equally visible place in an equally legible way.
At the moment what happens here in the UK is that you get things advertised as “mlk” or “scheese”. There’s no standardised language, and it’s actually harder to work out what it is you’re looking at. I imagine it’d be similar if people have to start selling “brgers” and “bergurs”. Might even lead to more chance of a mix-up for people who can’t read well.
A specific logo would be good, too. Separate, easily distinguishable logos for vegan, vegetarian, and containing meat. At the moment there’s no emblem which tells you something contains meat, and there’s no standardisation on vegan/vegetarian logos, which means that both are a “V” which is either green or in the negative space of something green, and which can be in any font. This isn’t optimal for quickly and easily informing people about the contents of what they’re buying.
So, again, it’s helpful but nowhere near as helpful as it could be - not least for the fact that there are plenty of manufacturers who have veggie/vegan products who don’t label that fact at all. Presumably for fear that the vocal minority who say they won’t eat anything which doesn’t contain meat might not buy their products. But if everything had such labelling, then that would just make it commonplace and people would get used to seeing these labels on their bread/pasta/whatever.
Cause the world isnt burning and you can spend time to worry about this shite
This is called the “relative privation fallacy” - where it’s stated or implied that action shouldn’t be taken on one issue because larger issues also exist. It’s like suggesting that the police shouldn’t try to catch pickpockets because unsolved murders exist.
The truth is that it’s possible for organisations to work on multiple fronts at once and that making rules around food labelling doesn’t imply that “the world is[…] burning” isn’t also something that’s being worked on.
“Our data shows that almost 70% of European consumers understand these names as long as products are clearly labelled vegan or vegetarian,”
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?
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.
What I’m interested in is - how is this supposed to work with all the different languages in all EU countries? For example in finnish “steak” and “patty” both translate as “pihvi”. On top of that words like “kasvispihvi” (vegetable steak/patty) have been in use since early 1900s. Why the hell should EU be able to affect our language to a degree of banning commonly used words everyone understands? Absolutely nobody would think kasvispihvi contains meat, and it’s absurd to even suggest that it couldn’t be used in marketing
I never said they should regulate it. I just said that I don’t see the concept of steak (even in my language/not english) as anything other than meat. When I go grocery shopping I look at what I buy but I also expect the packaging to say what kind of steak it is. Like beef, chicken, pork. Even vegan ones like soy steak, bean steak (I don’t actually know any examples).
My main point being call it what you like I just don’t agree with the semantics of calling a non meat product steak since at least in my language (Slovene) and english steaks are defined by being a cut of meat.
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.
I mean you can just call the burgers “patties” which we do in my country anyway. Burger refers to the whole sandwich, not the patty. If they regulate the word “patty” to require meat, I hope farmers will drop cow patties at their doorsteps.
Not a fan of them doing it to the word sausage though, it’s clearly a form factor above all else.
But a restaurant should be allowed to sell me a veggie burger. Why on earth should we call it a burger for beef patties, chicken patties, veal patties and fish patties, but not for bean patties, veggie patties or plant based meat patties like impossible? The only thing different to a “burger” are ingredients which are already swapped out for different ones on a regular basis.
Tbh chicken, fish, pork should also not count as burger if they want to actually preserve purity.
Personally I think the burger should refer to the shape of the sandwich, regardless of what you put inside it, and we should call the patty a patty, regardless of what it’s made of. This luckily is what we’re doing where I live, but if that means that restaurant-prepared veggie burger can’t be called a veggie burger, that’s bullshit. I thought it meant specifically the patties (which in American are called burgers and if anyone has authority on naming here it’s the Americans, as they’ve perfected the art of fa(s)t foods).
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?
Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product
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?
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.
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to “emulsified high fat offal tubes” to more accurately describe them?
Nah, this would hurt meat lobbyist’ feelings.
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.
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.
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.
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 😁
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.
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.
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 ?
Don’t really care either way, but I shall point and laugh.
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.
I’d like to add that “I know who cares” my question is rethoric, those who care are idiots wasting parliament’s time.
I’m sure this critical decision will help us.
🤦🏻♂️
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”?
“Sausage”, I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
I guess the most commonly used word to describe a poop in Swedish can’t be used anymore. Bajskorv, or poop sausage.
This decision is beyond stupid and smells of corruption. Sausage, burger etc. have been used to describe the shape of things for decades. I could agree that plant beef, or halumi pork would be an issue, but not this.
