I’m really glad that we don’t have more serious problems to deal, than this.
“Our data shows that almost 70% of European consumers understand these names as long as products are clearly labelled vegan or vegetarian,”
How fucking stupid are your customers if “almost 70%” can work out that a vegan sausage doesn’t contain meat?
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin
70% is pretty good, sadly.
But honestly, the vegan sausages and steaks are not sausages and stakes, even if they are still ultra-processed like their meat counterparts. They really should invent different names that are used for these products.
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?
How would they even define a sausage anyway, meat content? Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product - probably more than most sausages actually given how much filler they put in them.
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to “emulsified high fat offal tubes” to more accurately describe them?
And blood sausage is a very good example to show that “sausage” is an established appendix to show the shape of something, while specifying what it’s made of with a term beforehand. Pork sausage. Beef sausage. Turkey sausage. Blood sausage. This works so well that I can invent words of artificial things and still convey what I mean by that: Paper sausage. Ice sausage. Cloth sausage. Glass sausage. …Chickpea sausage. Broccoli sausage. Bean sausage.
It’s a non-brainer. The legislators are being deliberately obtuse here.
Also traditionally it would’ve been in an intestine, but they’ve been making other sorts of casings for meat-based sausages for a while anyway, so that argument against plant based sausages is dead in the water too IMO
Where do you live that blood sausage has more animal product than regular sausages (where the filler is often bone mass and such)? Blood sausage filler where I come from is usually barley groats (or some other format of barley. Barley is really universal apparently).
Picked out a random one they sell here. Contents: barley groats, “food blood” (19%), pork rind, pork (8%), roasted onion, pork fat, salt, various spices
These are generally listed in rough order of importance, so blood sausage is basically more barley groats than animal products.
Now for comparison, the cheapest smoked sausage out there (the sandwich sausage variety, not grill or oven). Contents: chicken meat mass (39%), pork (18%), pork fat, water, cheese (6%), various shit you don’t even want to think or know about.
It’s utterly cheap shit (the chicken meat mass of course includes shit like soft-ish bones ground up, etc), but even this is more animal-y than blood sausages.
Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product
The EU document specifically mentions that blood based products counts as meat, so blood sausage is fine.
That’s fucking stupid. Blood isn’t meat, it’s blood. How can something liquid be meat?
In the end it’s a legal document and the terms are defined for the purpose of the regulation, not necessarily how the terms are used in daily life.
Is milk and honey also a meat product? they are stored/produced in the animal too, like blood. Can I call it sausage if I fill a casing with them?
It’d be ironic to be able to call “sausage” to something that tastes and feels nothing like a sausage just because it happens to come from an animal… but being unable to call sausage to something that does look and taste like a sausage but happens to not come from an animal.
Hot take, I don’t think legal documents should get a pass to redefine words and use them differently than how they’re used in daily life. I’m sure they do it on purpose specifically to make it harder for laymen to parse those types of documents, which is stupid.
It would be easier and clearer to write this regulatory document using common parlance, and then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to “emulsified high fat offal tubes” to more accurately describe them?
Nah, this would hurt meat lobbyist’ feelings.
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I am all for allowing vegan sausages to just be called sausage. But I am not the biggest fan of vegan steaks getring the same treatment. Mostly just because a steak is by definition a slice of meat. Patties are fine since they are just ground minced stuff made into a certain shape kinda like sausages.
Don’t really care about steaks, but burgers, sausages and many others are really established with their veggie and vegan variants. It’s completely nonsensical to ban them.
I mean you can just call the burgers “patties” which we do in my country anyway. Burger refers to the whole sandwich, not the patty. If they regulate the word “patty” to require meat, I hope farmers will drop cow patties at their doorsteps.
Not a fan of them doing it to the word sausage though, it’s clearly a form factor above all else.
But a restaurant should be allowed to sell me a veggie burger. Why on earth should we call it a burger for beef patties, chicken patties, veal patties and fish patties, but not for bean patties, veggie patties or plant based meat patties like impossible? The only thing different to a “burger” are ingredients which are already swapped out for different ones on a regular basis.
The definition even includes “turtle steak” which I didn’t even know was a thing… and also fish, which has very different taste and properties than beef steak, for example. I feel that the labeling of “steak” should always come with what is the steak made of anyway… and once you do that then I don’t see what’s the harm of allowing for more exotic sources of protein.
What I’m interested in is - how is this supposed to work with all the different languages in all EU countries? For example in finnish “steak” and “patty” both translate as “pihvi”. On top of that words like “kasvispihvi” (vegetable steak/patty) have been in use since early 1900s. Why the hell should EU be able to affect our language to a degree of banning commonly used words everyone understands? Absolutely nobody would think kasvispihvi contains meat, and it’s absurd to even suggest that it couldn’t be used in marketing
So we should call them vegetarian protein cylinders instead of sausages?
I’m a meat eater and I don’t even see much point in this ruling. Basically all the plant-based steak or burger alternatives I’ve seen have been clearly labeled as such. Stores usually separate them from meat-based products anyway, so that vegans and vegetarians could more easily find what they’re looking for.
Good to see the parliament tackling the most pressing issues.
Haha yeah awesome real problems getting solved by serious politicians here, guys! If you can actually get your hands on any real meat without paying an arm and a leg for it what the actual fuck are we doing here lads what the fuck are these fucking politicians doing???
The world is on fire, the economy is in the shitter globally, there are multiple ongoing genocides, facism is on the rise again, and we’re wiggling our dicks around talking about whether you can call veggie burgers “burgers”? Are you serious? WHO CARES???
Is this bring your kid to work day and they let the kids do a vote for a change instead as a treat? Is this a joke?? What motherfucker is getting into politics to make sure “hey those damn vegans better not call anything a burger”.
These poncy little briefcase-botherers need a hobby or something because this is absolutely the biggest case of dicking around on the job I’ve ever heard of. Ridiculous. Stupid. A joke. Pathetic. Childish. Vapid. Can we get some adults in the EU Parliament please?
Or.
We could tackle multiple problems at once. Why does it have to be a this-or-that thing?
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 👍
To me this is also a non problem. But if they can solve it just so they can move on, that’d be great
Voting the way an industry told them to vote is not solving anything. Shouldn’t have been considered worthy of a vote at all.
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 😁
Honestly, coming up with a better name would be great. It would likely help the vegan products as well
why are they doing this shit when there are so many problems in the world?
because they already participated in those problems.
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.
Welcome to the European Union. Solving non-issues is what they do all day.
Seems a bit idiotic to me. So what’s a burger with veggie substitutes supposed to be called? Vegger?
Another shitty lobby demand became regulation just like that. Besides, protecting the label „burger“? Really? You know what I‘ll just call them sandwiches from now on. Fuck that.
It’s an odd one, because we’ve had veggie burgers for as long as I can remember.
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.
There’s at least two more votes at different levels before this becomes regulation.
People don’t really understand how EU works
To be fair, the media usually does a real shit job of explaining it.
If they explained things they wouldn’t be able to sell panic, fear or anger as easily.
That’s true
Meanwhile Brussels city just scrapped the money to shelter homeless when it’s freezing
You can still call them burger. You just cannot sell them as burgers. So unless you sell vegan burgers for a living, this does not affect you whatsoever.
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.
Next thing you know they prohibit gender speech as well.
In some german states they already have prohibit gender speech in public institutions, including schools and universities.
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
I’m sure this critical decision will help us.
Are veggie patties really sold as “Burgers” in the EU? A Burger is technically a dish, it deppends what you put in it, as far as I understand. You can have an Egg burger, or a turd burger.
Fuck the meat industry, btw. If it’s dying - time to get a “real” job. Free market and all.
This stinks of (rotten) meat lobby.
I hope the meat substitute industry comes up with some kind of ‘it’s not meat’ marketing campaign to counter this.
It worked for oat milk. I’m buying “no milk” all the time 😅
NOT M!LK :)
A company here just calls everything Salmo’n, Chicke’n and so on, technically it isn’t the actual word.
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
Okay, I like it as I am looking for replacements for salmon or chicken. So if they start calling their burger burge’r to circument such rules I wouldn’t mind.
I get how similar naming can be useful in knowing what sort of product you’re getting and what it can be used to replace, but I dislike more how it is purposefully misleading. Shouldn’t be allowed to call it that close to salmon without it containing any salmon. Same for other similar ingredient names where there’s a chance of confusion.
A meat product being quirky and inverting the m so it is marketed as w’eat would just be… No.
Praise the lord.
I hope the meat substitute industry comes up with some kind of ‘it’s not meat’ marketing campaign to counter this.
Well, honestly it would be fucking time they come out with some name that not mimic the meat products name.
Cool still not buying dead animal
This is what seems crazy to me, surely no one is changing what they buy based on this and who is really so dumb that they were confused by the vegan sausage not containing meat?
And even if, no one dies of eating a vegan sausage by mistake.
Generally no, but food allergies could cause death depending on the vegan alternative contents. Have a severe allergy to wheat, seitan is a no-go. Have a severe allergy to legumes, chickpeas and bean altertanives are a no-go.
However, I’ve never seen vegan alternatives not clearly labeled as vegan or meat alternative is some very obvious way. And the people I know with allergies severe enough to cause severe reactions read the ingredients carefully of everything they buy. And ask what’s in things before eating something prepared by somebody else.
Not true. I made my racist uncle eat a vegan sausage once and he was almost offended to death
Congrats to the meat-farmers and -industry! It shows you are “winning” the game against vegetarians and vegans. Now you can finally stop your usual whining about subsidies and the like - everything solved eh?
Praise the lord
meat-farmer
Hah
I’m sorry, but the “green” burgers aren’t burgers. It’s the same like calling margarine butter.
Yeah “green” burgers don’t involve torturing sentient beings.
sentient beings
lol only torture is your anthropomorphism
Non-human animals with brains and central nervous systems are sentient. Your anthropocentrism is showing.
Haha
Keep digging the hole.
Yes they do. The poor beings that have to eat that crap.
grow the fuck up
Plants are sentient they feel pain.
😑 so torture a bunch of alfalfa, or a bunch of alfalfa and a much larger more sentient cow as well?
I just stated a fact. I didn’t share my opinion on veganism. You just established that you aren’t against the torturing of sentient beings and that you think life dying in order to support other life is a good thing. That you do infact see some life as inferior to other life. I just wanted to point out your extremely poor choice of words lol
im not sure how far your understanding of biology goes lil bro
Let’s say plants can suffer:
- Option 1: Torture and kill 4kcal worth of plant, then feed it to an animal. Torture and kill that animal. Calories produced: 1kcal. Suffering generated: 4kcal plants + 1kcal animal.
- Option 2: Torture and kill 1kcal of plant. Eat it. Calories produced: 1kcal. Suffering generated: 1kcal plant
Therefore: A vegan always produces less suffering than a vegetarian or omnivore.
And a fruitarian produces less suffering than a vegan , but why stop there?
Wow. This is the state of our education system.
Wow.
They are not, they don’t even have a central nervous system.
Citation needed.
It wasn’t until the 21st century that we showed fairly conclusively that fish can feel pain. So it seems very unlikely that we have strong evidence that plants do.
Unless you are arguing we shouldn’t have had compassion for fish and their suffering up until very recently I think your point supports mine. We do know they respond to stimuli and some root systems form neural like structures so it seems probable. Imagine hooking up pain and suffering tolerance to science and thinking you are a good person ha. Could you even?
You’re an idiot
Okay shit sausage chase me to other posts. But you are still a shit sausage lol
Plants have feelings too
No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…
Edit: Getting downvoted for scientific facts.
Manches der Sachen in der Bullshit Bingo sind wirklich Bullshit seitens der Veganer*innen. Sind nicht viele, aber da sind zwei, drei Sachen.
Als fast Vegetarier*in kann ich schon gut nachvollziehen warum Leute vegan werden. Aber es halt auch einiges an Misinfo seitens Veganer*innen z.B. die Sache mit dem Lab, wo Statistiken aus der USA verwendet werden obwohl in Europa eher künstliches Lab gängiger ist.
Ich würde auch nie behaupten, dass alle Veganis immer die Wahrheit sagen. Aber welche Misinfo meinst du denn genau? Über Lab-Statistiken weiß ich nichts, steht das da auf der Seite?
Es sind halt so manche Sachen die halt oft falsch von irgendwelche Moralapostel wiedergegeben werden. Da wird z.B. bzgl. Käse gerne gesagt, dass Kälber geschlachtet werden nur um an tierisches Lab zu kommen um Käse herstellen zu können obwohl bei ca. 80% aller heimischen Käsen künstliches Lab benutzt wird, da diese günstiger und leichter zugänglich ist.
Auch wird gerne gesagt, dass alles Milch aus der unfreiwilligen Schwängerung von Kühen kommt obwohl es reichlich Biobauernhöfe gibt, die keine erzwungene Schwangerschaft machen sondern einen Bullen mit den Kühen auf die Weide stellen sobald die Kühe wieder brünstig werden. Die Zeit zwischen Gebären und Brunst variiert von Tier zu Tier. Bei Kühen ist es etwa vier Wochen. Ziegen zwei Wochen. Schafe sechs Monate.
Wer tierische Produkte gänzlich meiden will, hab ich mit keine Probleme, solange man nicht irgendwelche Peta oder ALF Argumente benutzt die gar nicht stimmen.
Gegen Vegetarismus gibt es kaum Gegenargumente wenn Vegetarismus gewissenhaft eingehalten wird. Gibt aber genug Vegetarier*innen, die sich nicht bewusst sind welche Firmen bei Molkerei und Eierprodukte unnötiges Tierleid verursachen.
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”.
You’re supposed to leave the butter out of the fridge. And tastes really good, unlike margarine.
But margarine literally isn’t butter? I’ve never heard anyone complain about that. If anything, the opposite. Don’t hand someone margarine when they asked for butter.
EU parliamentarians are so far up their ass, they can’t even see the big ass VEGAN logo that is on every vegan meat replacement product
So why not call it a vegan patty or something similar. This is ultimately a regional issue as every region will hold meaning of labels differently.
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.
The expectation matters.
I’m a french vegetarian living in France, and I couldn’t care less about this decision, the people arguing for either side are really wasting their time on this, who cares how it’s called honestly ? As long as the products are available in store and the labeling is different, which it always is, and very clearly: veggie based product try their best to make sure vegetarian and vegans will identify them easily and will know without a doubt that it is not meat. Who care that it is called a “burger”, “steak” or something else ?
I care that the government cares (or more specifically that it was bribed to do so by lobby groups)
Vegetarian or not, you should care about this. Propping up the meat and dairy industry is not in the interests of the public. This move is part of an agenda by the meat and dairy industry to deceive the public into thinking there’s something “natural” about the modern meat processing industry. It’s bullshit and if we had a government that actually worked in our interests instead of that of the fat cats, it would be the meat and dairy industry being forced to change their labelling, to highlight to the public the real costs of meat consumption.
Yea I’m paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of cronies circlejerking about this crap
I’d like to add that “I know who cares” my question is rethoric, those who care are idiots wasting parliament’s time.
Don’t really care either way, but I shall point and laugh.
You should care that people you’re paying taxes to are wasting time discussing and voting on special interest nonsense like this.
I should, and normally I would, but right now french politics is so crazy, this particular issue seems very low stakes in comparison.
I doubt it’ll actually go through.
They’re clearly labeled “veggie”, “vegitarian” or “vegan”, and consumers understand those labels to mean, at minimum, no meat.
“Sausage”, I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage. I don’t agree, but I can understand the argument being made.
“Burger”, however. Is distinctly different than “hamburger”, in fact, we often substitute the prefix to fit whatever it is. (Not that hamburgers are made of ham, i know it comes from hamburg) Such as, “fish-burger” or “chicken-burger”, so why would “veggie-burger” be any more confusing than “fish-burger”?
“Sausage”, I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage.
I don’t; the defining feature of sausage isn’t that it’s meat, it’s the fact that it’s stuffed in a tube. If people want to grind up veggies and stuff them in a tube, why would that not be a veggie sausage?
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”
It’s not just meat usually though.
It’s a mix of mostly meat, some flour or even vegetables (like onion) and seasoning. Sometimes you can even have cheesy sausages.
Some sausages here are as low as 11% of meat. Then again there is “product that’s comparable to meat” for a more significant portion, but rest flour and other things. You just can’t call minced ligaments and fat “meat” here but anyway I think sausages are more about the way they’re made and their shape than being made of meat
I am well aware. You don’t have to convince me of what I already think. I just said an argument can be made given the long lineage of the name “Sausage” and its respective local counterpart.
Regardless. Just to be super clear. As far as I’m concerned, EU can fuck off with this one, it’s not something that needs to be regulated on an EU level. Each member is perfectly capable of deciding themselves what can and can not be called “Sausage”.
This is just France trying to throw its weight around to appease their own farmers. Why they wanted to involve EU in it is beyond me.
Language is descriptive not prescriptive.
If “veggie sausage” conveys what I mean, then it’s perfectly acceptable language.
The only reason there’s even a question about this is because the meat industry is panicking.
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.
I thought you could stuff anything into a bun shaped piece of bread and call it a burger.
Its not always clearly labeled tho. Last year my brother took me to a burger joint in Minneapolis and only after I thought the burger tasted very weird did I learn that it was an all vegan burger joint. Not complaining, but it should be clearly labeled what youre getting, IMO.
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.
You’re just making a really terrible, bad faith argument, for the sake of arguing, when the guy just wanted to share a situation where he was a bit confused as to what he was getting.
I would just enjoy having animal abuse products be labeled clearly but sure, you know me better than I know myself I guess?
I don’t think anyone is oblivious to the fact that burgers by default contains animal product. But I’m sure you’ll be the one to prove that wrong.
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.
