France is set to ban use of words associated with products of animal origin to describe products containing a “significant proportion of vegetable proteins”.
The ban, which comes into effect from October 1, 2022, will see France become the first European country to prohibit the use of words such as ‘steak’ and ‘sausage’ when describing vegetable-based products.
France’s move comes on the back of a law, introduced there in spring 2020, relating to the transparency of information on agricultural and food products.
An official decree published in France this week stated:
“It will not be possible to use sector-specific terminology traditionally associated with meat and fish to designate products that do not belong to the animal world and which, in essence, are not comparable”.
The move only applies to products manufactured and marketed in France, but not to products that are imported from other countries within the EU.
In a statement this week, France’s largest farming lobby group, FNSEA, welcomed the move but said it was “insufficient” as imports were not covered under the ban.
“This remains insufficient and will not avoid any confusion among the French consumer, especially for meat. Indeed, if the decree applies to products manufactured and marketed on French territory, this is not the case for those imported from the EU,” the statement read.
It, and other lobby groups, are calling on the French authorities to have this raised in Brussels “to extend the scope of application to all products, regardless of their origin”.
In the ‘dairy’ realm, the EU has already banned the use of words such as ‘milk’, ‘cheese’ and ‘butter’ from describing products that are not of animal origin.
And recently, the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) in South Africa announced that it will ban the use of meat-related words in plant-based product names such as ‘biltong’, ‘meatballs’, ‘nuggets’, and ‘bratwurst’.
These do not meet the definition of processed meat in that country, the authorities have said.