Veggie burgers: worthy of the name?
“It pains me to say it, but Brexiters have a couple of good arguments,” said Henry Mance in the FT. The EU, they say, has “a propensity for baffling rules” – and a tendency to cave into the farming lobby. Both habits were on display last week, when a sizeable number of MEPs voted to ban the words “burger”, “sausage”, “steak” and so on being used for vegetarian products. They argued that such terms were confusing for consumers, an insult to the hard work of livestock farmers and a violation of Europe’s cultural traditions. In the event, they were decisively defeated. But it’s alarming that many lawmakers seemed quite serious about this absurd endeavour. “What next? Would we have to rename hot dogs? Are you telling me that the pigs are not actually in blankets?”
The vote was a victory for environmentalism, said The Guardian. Moving away from meat is essential if Europe’s food industry is to be made more sustainable. Farmers’ groups had demanded that the terms “veggie discs” and “veggie tubes” be used instead, which would only sow confusion and needlessly reduce sales of plant-based products. But it was also “a triumph for logic”. Yes, a sausage is usually made of meat, but it needn’t always be. “The term is synonymous with shape rather than content.” Glamorgan sausages, for instance, are a traditional Welsh delicacy made of cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs. More recently, vegan steaks have become “part of the culinary landscape”.
But shouldn’t these things have their own names, asked India Knight in The Sunday Times. The vocab for meat-free products is “obsessed with meat, from beetroot carpaccio to cauliflower steaks”. Why do vegetarians and vegans “constantly hark back” to the thing they’re trying to get away from? Calling everything a sausage “seems so unimaginative”. Well, Europe’s plant-based food manufacturers are still going to have to come up with some new names, said Kate Abnett on Reuters. The European Court of Justice had already banned terms like “soy milk” and “vegan cheese” for non-dairy products. But last week, MEPs voted that even the phrases “milk-like” or “cheesestyle” were beyond the pale.