Meat label law faces challenge

A federal lawsuit says Mississippi is violating free-speech rights by banning makers of plant-based foods from using terms such as “meatless meatballs” and “vegan bacon.”

The lawsuit against Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant and the state’s Republican agriculture commissioner, Andy Gipson, was filed by the Plant Based Foods Association and the Illinois-based Upton’s Naturals Co., which makes vegan products and sells them in many states, including Mississippi. It was filed the same day Mississippi enacted a new law that declares “a plant-based or insect-based food product shall not be labeled as meat or a meat food product.”

“The ban serves only to create consumer confusion where none previously existed,” says the lawsuit, which is backed by the Institute for Justice, a free-market advocacy group based in Virginia.

A similar food labeling lawsuit was filed in Missouri last year by the Oregon-based Tofurky Co., which makes vegetarian food products, and The Good Food Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for alternatives to meat.

Producers of beef, poultry, pork and lamb have been pushing to protect meat terminology as companies develop more plant-based products that look and taste similar to meat.

In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed a law to keep veggie products from being called meat, non-rice products from being described as rice and sugar alternatives from being marketed as sugar.

The chairman of the Mississippi Senate Agriculture Committee, Republican Billy Hudson of Hattiesburg, was chief sponsor of the meat labeling legislation.

“I don’t want to eat meat grown by a test tube in a laboratory,” Hudson said. “If my constituents do, they ought to know what they’re getting.”