France bans vegetarian ‘steaks’ and ‘sausages’

In France, it will soon be prohibited to refer to meat substitutes as steaks, sausages or other “animal” products. The French agricultural industry now wants to pass this rule on to the European Union.

Animal kingdom’s exclusive “privilege”

From the 1st of October, plant-based meat substitutes in France will no longer be allowed to be called sausage, steak, hamburger or any other name that might refer to meat. This is stated in a new decree published in the French Official Journal.

“It will not be possible to use the terminology specific to the sectors traditionally associated with meat and fish to designate products that do not belong to the animal kingdom,” Le Monde quotes. Only foodstuffs manufactured or labelled before this date will be granted a reprieve and can be marketed until 31 December 2023.

The new legislation is strongly supported by the farming community in France. It is “an essential step in favour of transparency of information to the consumer as well as the preservation of our products and know-how”, says Jean-François Guihard, President of Interbev, the national organisation of the livestock and meat industry.

Urging Europe to join in

Moreover, the industry federations are now hoping to extend the rule to the whole of the European Union, as at present the law does not apply to products from other European countries or Turkey. As such, plant-based patties imported from abroad are allowed to remain burgers.

However, the issue has been regularly debated at European level and so far no ban on ‘meat names’ has been achieved. Only the dairy industry has succeeded: plant-based substitutes for dairy products cannot be called “milk” or “cheese”. A French proposal to ban even all references to dairy products, such as the description “plant-based alternative to yoghurt”, was rejected last year.

The National Observatory for Plant Nutrition (ONAV), meanwhile, regrets that France has taken a conservative position, which is “the opposite of current trends and European policy on these matters”. In the meantime, the pork industry wants to take it even further and also ban the labelling of so-called laboratory meat as meat.