EU Parliament votes to restrict 'steak' and 'burger' labels to meat only

Exactly. Veggie burgers are waaay older than any "plant based meat" products. Haloumi is at least 500 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if there were haloumi burgers before the word burger existed. And I can't imaging it took long after the word became used for meat sandwiches, someone also used it for a vegetarian variant.

People don't really understand how EU works

I mean, it'll be harder to search for "burger" on my supermarket's website to find vegetarian alternatives to burgers. They'll get more expensive because they have to relabel things. And my EP representatives have to waste their time on this instead of important issues.

Nah fuck that. They‘re just sandwiches anyway. This might not affect me directly but it‘s still bullshit overregulation and should be boycotted because who is to tell where it will end? Next thing you know they prohibit gender speech as well. I hate everything about this.

It does affect me to know that my tax money is used by these bunch of fucks to discuss bullshit like that.

My grandma died of anemia because she was unfed in her retirement home but these bunch of privilege motherfuckers have the time to discuss vegan burgers? Bitch please

A lot of companies sell vegan burgers, though.

If they have a line of burgers, some of which have meat in them and some don't, what are they supposed to do? Keep two different brands separately, putting their fish, chicken and bovine burgers under one brand and others under another? Or just ditch the word "burger" altogether?

It's affecting me that I'm paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of crony politicians to chitchat about such bullshit

NOT M!LK :)

That seems pretty scummy and misleading. I'm not a fan of the restrictive naming Iike in the article, but the name shouldn't try to mislead either.

A burger is more about the form, same even for sausage, steak is more gray area, something like "veggie minced meat" or stuff with "meat" in the name is a no-no imo

Yeah "green" burgers don't involve torturing sentient beings.

That's why they're called veggie burgers, or are you just unfamiliar with how language works? Would you accept a glass of body milk with your breakfast?

They tend to advertise very heavily they are not meat, because they want to be found -specifically - by people looking to purchase things that are not meat. Claiming there's some form of "trickery" afoot is high horseshit

I don't mind if a meat-free burger is called a burger, as long as they make clear there's no meat in it. "Meat-free burger", "vegan burger", I think that's fine.

The same boomers whining about "vegan burgers" also whine about margarine being called margarine instead of butter, all while hating real butter for being "hard to spread and tasting the same".

What do you think we should call vegan sausage? And why is it a problem to call it vegan sausage?

Often they're specifically meat replacement products so being able to call it as closely the product they're meant to be replacing as possible is useful for them. Tells the consumer what kind of product it is and so on. Though that same thing can lead consumers to expect a different product to what they're getting.

This is in a very literal way not a problem though. They were just bribed by the meat industry.

I'm paying 50% income taxes to pay for a bunch of cronies to chitchat about this bullcrap. Meanwhile they just scraped the money to shelter homeless people during winter

I'm totally in favour of solving multiple problems at once.

Personally, I do not view this as a problem. My issue is with the EU Parliament wasting time with this in place of anything that I perceive as an actual problem.

If you think that calling veggie burgers "burgers" is a problem worth their time and effort, more power to you 👍

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 😁

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.

You underestimate how stupid the average person is.

I went vegetarian two years ago and cannot for the life of me fathom how one cannot differentiate... That said, I'm from Sweden and products in other countries might be marketed differently so I wouldn't be able to say, but still.

I mean imagine the confusion the other way around. Some scummy company was misleading you into thinking your buying a veggie patty but instead you bought a (meat) steak. Obviously nobody is happy about a product misleading them like that.

I know. Tönnies sei dank

Ayyy morningstar

Much better than the Impossible to eat burger.

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?

So we should call them vegetarian protein cylinders instead of sausages?

Also bad for your health in the long run, because meat is heating up the atmosphere and outcompetes nature that would otherwise store CO2.

yes but lets not pretend impossible burgers are a health food. they're great but just like cow burgers i wouldn't recommend eating them as a staple of your diet

did it work for milk? it won't backfire.

And even if, no one dies of eating a vegan sausage by mistake.

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"

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.

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).

Cool so lets just put a label on anything that isn't vegan. Problem solved.

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.

Bullshit. I'm not paying 50% taxes so a bunch of idiot can whine about "fake meat".

True, but of all the things to focus on, this is utterly ridiculous.

Yea I'm paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of cronies circlejerking about this crap

I should, and normally I would, but right now french politics is so crazy, this particular issue seems very low stakes in comparison.

There was a burger in two chicken patties instead of bread being sold as a keto-friendly alternative at KFC

Bovine drippins

Calves drink

It's a favorite vegan pastime to invent the most disgustable description of animal based foods possible.

That would be an amazing law to see passed.

"Its maddening! They've even got vegan apples nowadays. Something as ancient and simple as apples and they've gone and made them all vegan," they will say.

Well.. the restriction is for vegan food not being labeled as burger/sausage, but it does not legally prevent someone from calling something a non-burger or non-sausage and still have meat in it.

They should just change one or two letters or make them phonetically similar. Such as borgir, sossich, wurzt and stek.

Edit: Been having issues with Lemmy today. That's probably why it triple posted my comment.

Which is really funny because soy milk, oat milk, and almond milk have existed as such for literally hundreds of years. And etymologically cow's milk actually takes its name from those, not the other way around.

I was apparently misremembering something. It's still a fact though that the word milk has been associated with alternate plant based versions for literal centuries.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages

I mean.. if they meant "meat" literally as flesh/muscle fiber, then eggs would not meet the definition either.

However, wouldn't that definition also technically mean that milk can also be categorized as a meat product? Same for honey. Someone also mentioned peanut butter in another comment, is butter considered meat as well since it often comes from milk?

And what about broth/stock? ..chicken stock is common, does that mean that now it should be considered a meat product and you can no longer have vegetable stock?

Afaik fish is not considered meat, definitely not in colloquial language. With a quick search I found another EU article which mentions meat and fish, and they list meat and fishery products as being different things: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/hygiene-rules-for-food-of-animal-origin.html

What that article includes under meat: "Meat, including domestic ungulates (bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine species); poultry and lagomorphs (farmed birds, rabbits, hares and rodents); farmed and wild game; minced meat, meat preparations and mechanically separated/recovered meat; and meat products."

I found a moment to look up that edible part that you found: "For the purposes of this part, ‘meat’ means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, " So no, they do not define meat as the edible parts of the animals, they define meat as the edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I etc. You can't just ignore parts of a definition.

1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 is:

"Meat" means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8, including blood.

1.2. "Domestic ungulates" means domestic bovine (including Bubalus and Bison species), porcine, ovine and caprine animals, and domestic solipeds.

1.3. "Poultry" means farmed birds, including birds that are not considered as domestic but which are farmed as domestic animals, with the exception of ratites.

1.4. "Lagomorphs" means rabbits, hares and rodents.

1.5. "Wild game" means:

—

wild ungulates and lagomorphs, as well as other land mammals that are hunted for human consumption and are considered to be wild game under the applicable law in the Member State concerned, including mammals living in enclosed territory under conditions of freedom similar to those of wild game; and

—

wild birds that are hunted for human consumption.

1.6. "Fanned game" means farmed ratites and farmed land mammals other than those referred to in point 1.2.

1.7. "Small wild game" means wild game birds and lagomorphs living freely in the wild.

1.8. "Large wild game" means wild land mammals living freely in the wild that do not fall within the definition of small wild game.

Point 2.19 355 vs 247

Wow, more than half of CDU/CSU voted against it including Axel fucking Voss.

You sure it's 2.22? Awfully many yay-sayers among Eurogreens.

Germany actually opposed this.

In Danish it's definitely a shape, so... Which underlines the fact that this sort of legislation is pretty ridiculous in a multilingual society like the EU.

Please also remember, as per Saussure, that for the language user only the present exists. Etymologies are curious facts at best and doesn't necessarily mean anything for current usage.

Finally, a benefit of Brexit

Very well, I'm making a veggie bread stack then. I call it, the vregdstidge! Or the Veggstidge!

2025: You Tube is now a product available from both Google and Soylent Green.

But I don’t want to eat cereal with water, hence “oat milk” makes sense

Except that oat have not milk.
"oat juice" would not seems to bad as an alternative, for example. And the same applies to others vegan substitute of the milk.

Because its NEVER going to be the thing you want it to be. So instead of trying to fool yourself, just embrace new things. Are you really so fucking weak minded that need food shaped and styled like burgers just to eat it???

Bread is irrelevant. The patty makes the burger.

Evidence: You can order a McDonald burger without buns.

“Steak” I can kind of understand but “Burger” and “sausage” are a way to prepare and present food and not about the actual meat content. Fuck everybody that voted for this with a kackwurst (shit-sausage) but that word is now also illegal unless you are shiting meat…

"Burger" and "sausage" are now, for good or worse, synonymous of a certain things more than a way to prepare and present food.

"""200% a move by the meat lobby to suppress competition"""

Buddy the decision to imitate meat was to suppress competition you are just choosing sides of one rich asshole over the other. You are not moral. You could be but you don't seem to understand two wrongs don't make a right.

The joke was imitation meat branding. Anyone could have anticipated the problems calling plant pulp meat instead of it's own name like no one has a problem with Tofu and it is often used to replace meat. It was arrogance that ignored the foreseen consequences of imitation branding one of the globes biggest industries.

The justification seems to be 'the meat industry will be right' seemingly acknowledging wrongdoing.

Are you sure you are using that right? Did someone say this to you recently and now you are using it liberally while not fully grasping what justifies such a thing? Because sharing an opinion on lemmy is exact same privilege you have. Acting like you are entitled to imitate an entire industry instead of standing on your own feet...? I can see why someone said this to you recently.