California, USA: Miyoko’s Creamery wins legal battle to use the label ‘butter’ on its vegan spread
Plant-based dairy brand Miyoko’s Creamy, based in Sonoma County, California, USA, is celebrating a triumph in the legal case taken against them for using the label ‘butter’ on their products. A California federal judge ruled in favour of Miyoko’s use of the term on its products, as well as the words ‘cruelty-free’ and ‘lactose-free’.
In December of 2019, Miyoko’s received a letter from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), who stated that the vegan brand had violated state food regulations by marking its products as ‘cruelty-free’ and ‘vegan butter’. Following this, in February 2020, Miyoko’s struck back at the CDFA, suing the state for breaching the company’s First Amendment rights.
In August 2020, the CDFA pleaded to drop the case, but the court granted Miyoko’s preliminary injunction. When the hearing took place, the state brought forward a study that looked at consumer identification of various dairy and vegan products. It revealed that 26 per cent of consumers misidentified dairy-free cheese products, yet the findings also showed that 19 per cent of purchasers also misidentified dairy-based cheeses (livekindly.co). The state went on to present results that showed similar trends with other dairy and plant-based goods, but in many cases, shoppers were more confused by animal-based products — 12 per cent of consumers in the study misidentified vegan milks, but 16 per cent misidentified animal-based milks (law360.com).
Commenting on the findings, the judge said: “Taken as a whole, this research merely signals the following: that consumers are perhaps a bit better at identifying traditional cheeses than vegan cheeses, and perhaps a (roughly equivalent) bit better at identifying vegan milks than traditional milks,” the judge continued. “For the purposes of First Amendment scrutiny, this modest takeaway hardly cuts in favour of finding Miyoko’s use of ‘butter’ inherently misleading,” (livekindly.co).