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.
I’m really glad that we don’t have more serious problems to deal, than this.
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”
Steakn’t
Good to see the parliament tackling the most pressing issues.
“Steek and Bergers”?
Seems a bit idiotic to me. So what’s a burger with veggie substitutes supposed to be called? Vegger?
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
Sure, but I would have thought even most of the lower half would know what a sausage is.
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.
So we should call them vegetarian protein cylinders instead of sausages?
Sure, if that floats your boat. Or think of a brand new word, like how the sausage originally appeared to describe a particular meat product. Pure sarcasm likely wasn’t involved
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?
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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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
at least in my language (Slovene) and english steaks are defined by being a cut of meat.
My point was just that there’s so many languages in EU, and there’s bound to be other words that won’t really translate 1:1 like my pihvi example. Can something be sold as “bean steak” is a completely different discussion than can it be sold as “papupihvi”, yet they’re supposed to be treated the same with this regulation? It’s such a mess
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).
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.
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?
Overpaid morons. You could put them out of work right now and it would only be beneficial.
