EU weighs ban on veggie 'burger' and 'sausage' labels – DW – 12/10/2025
www.dw.com
European lawmakers face a decision on whether ordinary consumers would be confused by the idea of vegetarian sausages or vegan burgers. Meat producers say it's not that simple.

The measure was introduced by French conservative lawmaker Celine Imart, who argued it would prevent confusion with traditional meat products.

  • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    18 hours ago

    Clear labelling and vegetarian sausage not being allowed to be called “sausage” are two different things though.

    The EU could easily introduce labelling requirements that indicate whether a product contains meat or not, and even what kind of meat if we wanted that. We could standardize that just like we standardized the Nutriscore label.

    Edit: In fact, I’d love to be able to see at a glance whether a meat replacer is soy or mushroom based.

    • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
      35·
      18 hours ago

      EU already has lots of protected terms on food. Certain food types can only use the protected term if they meet some criteria (e.g. minimum content level or location of manufacture). I expect this is just trying to use the existing legal mechanism by adding “sausage” and “burger” and nothing more sinister.

      I think your ideas for labelling are all good though.

      • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        17 hours ago

        The issue I have with that though is that “sausage” and “burger” are extremely generic terms.
        I don’t think it makes sense to protect them in the same way that we protect “brie” or something like that.

        There isn’t even one type of burger or sausage, as they can be made from any kind of meat (beef, chicken, pork, etc). We then differentiate by calling them a “chicken sauage” or a “pork sausage”. Why would “vegetarian/plant-based sausage” be any different?