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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

labeling

Vive La Veggie Burger! EU Says Plant-Based Meats Can Keep Their Name

There’s good news for European vege- and flexitarians! Instead of having to order and shop for veggie “discs” and “tubes” they can order veggie burgers and sausages.

The European Parliament today rejected a proposal from the EU agriculture committee submitted last year to ban the use of meat labels like “burger” and “sausage” on similar plant-based substitutes. Proponents of the legislation believed that terms like “burger” on veggie products would cause confusion in the marketplace. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and you don’t have to shop for plant-based “pucks.”

We’re having our own labeling fight here in the U.S., where a number of states have put forward their own legislation banning plant-based products from using terms like burger and meat. Mississippi, one of the states advancing the restrictive re-naming agenda, wound up easing its policies, allowing terms like “veggie burger” to be used.

These labeling laws seem meant to stifle competition, especially at a time when sales of plant-based meats are on the rise. As we wrote last year:

Big Meat trying to quash alterna-meats’ popularity by telling companies how they can or can’t label themselves feels protectionist and ineffective, not to mention desperate, at this point. After all, the flexitarian movement is gaining strength not because consumers are unclear about whether the burgers they’re buying are made from plants or beef; rather, it’s bolstered by growing environmental and ethical concerns, health reasons, or because meatless meat is a media darling.

Since the time of that writing, the pandemic sparked a surge in sales of plant-based meat, and illuminated the ethical and logistical shortcomings of our existing traditional meat processing infrastructure. And with companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat rapidly expanding their retail presence across the country, the innovation and mainstreaming of plant-based burgers and hot dogs could quickly outpace any legislation aiming to curb it.

That doesn’t mean existing entities won’t try to inhibit plant-based alternatives. It wasn’t all good labeling news in Europe today. While you can order veggie burgers, the EU Parliament also imposed stricter rules for dairy substitutes, saying even the terms such as “milk-like” cannot be used on dairy-free products.

A Win for Veggie Burgers: Mississippi to Table Rigid Plant-based Meat Labeling Restrictions

In a win for free speech and veggie burgers everywhere, yesterday Mississippi officially revised its restrictive labeling rules around plant-based meat. The original regulations restricted companies from using traditional meat terms like “burger,” “hot dog,” and indeed “meat” on their packaging, even when preceded by terms like “vegan” or “plant-based,” arguing that the lingo could confuse consumers. This despite the fact that we’ve been buying veggie burgers for decades.

Mississippi’s restrictive meat labeling legislation went into effect in July of this year. In response, the Plant Based Food Association (PBFA) and member company Upton’s Naturals immediately sued the state, claiming that the new rules were a violation of the First Amendment. As a result of the lawsuit, the Mississippi Department of Agriculture proposed a new regulation in September that would let plant-based meat companies use terms like “veggie burger” and “vegan hot dog.” Yesterday that regulation took effect.

Mississippi wasn’t the only state to institute such strict labeling rules over the past year or so. Arkansas, Missouri, and a dozen other states have also banned a myriad of meat labeling terms. Under many of the states’ rules, each “offense” could be punishable by a $1,000 fine or one year in jail.

But plant-based meat wasn’t going to take these restrictions lying down. In August of last year the PBFA, Tofurky, the ACLU, and the Good Food Institute formed a coalition to sue Missouri, arguing that the new rules violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The group also challenged similar laws in Arkansas.

Jaime Athos, the CEO of Tofurky and President of the Board of the PBFA, spoke with me about the labeling issue in depth at SKS 2019 last month. There he told me that these labeling bills are a result of pressure from meat lobbies, which are threatened by the recent astronomical growth of the plant-based meat sector. They don’t actually serve the consumer. In fact, he argued that they could actually end up confusing the consumer, since people have been buying veggie burgers and vegan hot dogs for decades.”It’s insulting to the consumer,” he said.

It seems that at least in Mississippi, Tofurky has successfully netted a win for plant-based meat. But there are still many other battlefronts they have to win. “We hope that other states that introduced similar legislation in the past year, including Arkansas and Missouri, take note of Mississippi acknowledging and accepting already-used, clear qualifying terms such as ‘meat-free,’ ‘meatless,’ ‘plant-based,’ ‘vegetarian,’ and ‘vegan’ to describe plant-based protein products,” Athos wrote in an email statement to The Spoon.

Months ago, Athos told me that he and the coalition were fighting to establish a precedent with one of their three suits which would eventually kill all plant-meat labeling laws. This latest win with Mississippi could be just the precedent they were hoping for.

Tofurky CEO Explains Lawsuit, Says Arkansas Meat Labeling Law is “Unconstitutional”

“Free speech” is an argument that has justified a myriad of historic cases. Now it’s being used by plant-based meat producers to protect their right to call their products what they want.

This week the American Civil Liberties Union, The Good Food Institute, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and ACLU of Arkansas filed a lawsuit on behalf of alternative meat company Tofurky to challenge an Arkansas law that restricts meat labeling terms. Under the law, which was signed this March and is scheduled to go into effect on July 24, using words like “veggie burgers” or “plant-based sausages” on food could incur fines up to $1,000 per package (seriously). Alternative milks would also be considered mislabeled and subject to fines.

According to its press announcement, Tofurky is arguing that the Arkansas law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments by “improperly censoring truthful speech and creating consumer confusion in order to shore up the state’s meat and rice industries.”

This law may sound like an almost silly attempt on Big Meat’s part to quell the uprising in plant-based meat popularity. That’s probably because it is. The law’s main argument is that alternative meat companies using terms like burgers, hot dogs, and the like — even when accompanied with words like vegan or plant-based — are confusing consumers. However, Tofurky and others fighting the law think that’s a load of, well, baloney.

“It’s a pretext to say that this law is about consumer confusion,” Tofurky CEO Jaime Athos told me over the phone. He argues that continuing to label plant-based burgers and sausages as such is less confusing to the consumer. “We’ve been buying veggie burgers for decades,” he said. “It’s important to preserve our use of language.” In fact, the alternative terms for these products — such as veggie “pucks” or “discs” in lieu of “burgers” — are not only unappealing, they could actually end up being more confusing in the long run.

The idea of buying plant-based “pucks” may seem ridiculous, but repercussions to the meat labeling laws passed by Arkansas and twelve other states could be quite serious indeed for alternative meat companies. Missouri’s law is a criminal statute, which means that each violation — so, each package of veggie “sausages” or “ham” — could cost up to $1,000 or one year in jail. “That’s scary once you start doing the math,” said Athos.

So far, no actions have actually been taken to fine or jail offending plant-based meat companies. If and when they do, it’s not even clear who will pay. Will it be the maker of the “meat” in question, the supplier who sells it to the retailer, or the retail who sells it to the consumer? “We don’t know who’s on the hook for it,” said Athos. “It’s really convoluted.”

Despite the potential repercussions, Tofurky has yet to pull its products from any shelves. Athos is confident that they will come out on top. “This law is an inappropriate use of government power. It’s ultimately unconstitutional and will be found to be so,” he told me.

Tofurky and its posse is fighting a plant-based war on several fronts. In addition to Arkansas, over a dozen other states have passed similar meat-labeling restriction laws. Tofurky is currently also suing Missouri (the case is ongoing) and is involved in a similar case against Mississippi. They’re out to not just to protect its own rights, but that of all plant-based meat companies: “We’re hoping to set a precedent,” Athos told me.

It’s interesting that Tofurky has been the one to step up and make a stand against these laws. After all, they’re not among the newer raft of companies trying to make plants so meat-like that they’re indistinguishable from the real thing, like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. It seems that Beyond Meat, which aims to be sold alongside beef in the meat section of grocery stores, could more easily lead to customer confusion than Tofurky (though the risk of customers missing the “plant-based” label is still pretty slim).

The labeling issue will become even more contentious as cultured or lab-grown meat enters the scene. Unlike plant-based meat, which is made of plants, cultured meat is made of actual animal tissue. Theoretically, it will be indistinguishable from meat got from a slaughtered animal.

The FDA has already had several meetings to try and nail down regulatory frameworks around cell-based meat. While they’ve decided that the new food will be jointly regulated by the FDA and USDA, they have yet to land on how exactly it will be labeled — as plain-old meat, cell-based meat, or otherwise. We still have a few years until cultured meat gets to market, but as that day draws closer they’ll need to decide where to draw the line on what gets to call itself meat, lest they bring on even more lawsuits.

In the end, passing laws the one in Arkansas make meat producers look more running scared than anything else. And they should be. The plant-based meat market is growing at 6.8 percent CAGR and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. “This is coming from their own fears,” Athos told me, referencing the pressure meat companies are under as of late.

Passing a law isn’t going to stop people from wanting plant-based burgers, sausages, and pulled pork. It just might end up costing both sides a lot in legal fees.

Want a Veggie ‘Disc’? EU Cracks Down on Plant-Based Meat Labeling

If you’re in the E.U., time might be running out for you to order a veggie burger or vegan sausage link.

The Guardian reported this week that the agriculture committee of the E.U. banned the use of meat labels (like “steak,” “sausage,” or “burger”) to describe vegetarian products. The measures will be voted on by the full European parliament after May’s elections, and then will be put to a vote by member states and the European commission.

This decision follows a similar E.U. judgment which impacted plant-based food labeling in 2017. The European court ruled that vegan products aren’t allowed to be called “milk,” “cheese,” or “yogurt.”

According to The Guardian, a proposed replacement for the term “burger” is veggie disc. Which sounds only slightly more edible than “veggie cardboard.” One hopes they can be a little bit more creative when it comes to naming.

European meat corporations were apparently not involved in the ruling, but they’ve got to be happy about this. Allied Market Research projects that the plant-based meat market will reach $7.5 billion by 2025. But a big reason for meat alternative companies’ success is their ability to market to flexitarians — and they’ll have a much harder time doing that by selling veggie discs and plant-based links.

This same fight is being fought in the U.S., too. Animal agriculture corporations are lobbying states and even the President to crack down on what can and cannot be called “meat.” More than a dozen states have introduced meat labeling laws of their own. The FDA is also considering enforcing rules over what can and cannot be called “milk.”

Meat companies do kind of have an argument when it comes to plant-based meat. After all, it’s really just plants that are mimicking meat — though don’t tell that to Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat. Where the issue will really get sticky, however, is when cultured meat comes to market. This new product is biologically meat — animal muscle, fat, and connective tissue — but doesn’t come from a slaughtered animal.

The FDA and USDA are still figuring out how to regulate cell-based meat. And we likely have a few years before it’ll be sold in the U.S., so those regulatory bodies still have some time to decide. But if there’s one thing this E.U. issue has shown is that some people — farmers, meat companies, and even governments — are very protective of what can and cannot be called meat.

It makes sense that Europe would be even more sensitive to this than the U.S. After all, many regional specialty foods have something called Geographic Indications, meaning that a product has to be from a specific region in order to label itself as such (think: Champagne, Parmesan, etc.) Raw meats and dairy products are both categories of protected items. With its historied pride of food, it’s not surprising that European countries are leading the way on meat and dairy labeling crackdowns.

The issue will likely get more controversial as companies get better at making meat (and meat-like) products without the animal. Let’s just hope we never have to eat Veggie Discs. Ever.

When It Comes to Labeling Food “Meat,” Where Do We Draw The Line?

Things used to be so simple. Meat used to cover products that came from slaughtered animals, and everything else was, uh, not meat. But now the lines are blurred — and the meat industry is pissed about it.

This weekend the New York Times ran a story about pushback from animal agriculture industry groups against use the use of the term “meat” to describe any sausage, chop, or burger made from plants or grown in a petri dish — in short, anything that didn’t come from a slaughtered animal. Just this week, Arizona and Arkansas joined the over a dozen states that have introduced meat labeling bills.

The first law of this sort was passed last May in Missouri. The law prohibited companies from “misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” A few months after it passed, a coalition led by Tofurky, the American Civil Liberties Union and others challenged the new law.

The debate isn’t just limited to the butcher counter. In July of last year FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that his agency would start tightening regulations over what could and couldn’t be called “milk.”

On the surface, this pushback may seem a little bit petty. After all, the U.S. meat industry was worth $4.2 trillion in 2016 and show no signs of slowing down, while plant-based meat netted a comparatively tiny $670 million in 2018. Why does Big Meat care what vegan burgers call themselves?

In short, they care because they’re threatened. From 2017 to 2018, demand for plant-based meat rose a whopping 24 percent. To meet that demand we’ve seen an explosion of plant-based meat options, many of which do a pretty dang good job imitating meat thanks to new technologies like genetically modified heme or new protein extrusion methods. On top of that, companies like Beyond Meat are pushing to have their products displayed in the meat aisle of grocery stores.

Plant-based meat is no longer a fringe product for hippies — it’s now a legitimate competitor for traditional meat. And animal agriculture groups know it.

Once cell-based meat comes to market, the issue of what defines “meat” will become even more pressing. No matter how bloody or juicy the taste, plant-based burgers are still fundamentally not made of animals. Cell-based (or cultured) meat, however, is actual animal tissue — that just happens to have been made in a bath of serum, not a slaughterhouse. And some cultured meat companies have made the point that cell-based fish and pork must be labeled as “fish” and “pork” for both allergy and transparency reasons.


Finless Foods is creating cultured bluefin tuna [Taylor Grote vis Upsplash]

It’s hard to make the argument that meat made from actual animal muscle and fat cells should be called anything other than “meat.” (The USDA will have the final say on how to label cell-based meat.) However, adding qualifiers seems to make a lot of sense, both for plant-based and cultured meat. Not only to appease the cattlemen, but also for consumers.

Nebraska Democratic state senator Carol Blood, a vegan, was inspired to write a meat-labeling bill after she witnessed two women who were unclear over whether or not Beyond Meat contained animal tissue. “I don’t care that it says burger — I care that it says it’s meat,” Ms. Blood said in the New York Times.

The fact that meat alternatives are, well, alternative to meat is one of their main selling points. It would follow, then, that these companies would want to call out the fact that their products are not made from slaughtered animals. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are trying to draw in flexitarian consumers by making products that taste just as good as meat, without the animal.

Do you see how easy it is to spin yourself up into a tangled mess of meat labeling confusion?

There isn’t a clear-cut answer here, but I for one am team let-alternatives-call-themselves-meat-if-they-want — as long as they add a qualifier like “plant-based” or “cultured” so that the consumer is clear on what they’re buying.

Instead of putting their energy into pushing for labeling crackdowns, meat industry players would do well to take a page from Tyson’s and Cargill’s books and invest in their competition. (In fact, Tyson is reportedly developing its own line of plant-based “meats.”) It won’t solve the meat labeling question, but by having a stake in the meat alternatives game could help ease tensions in a future that’s only going to get more and more complicated.

Allergy Fears and Transparency Among Issues at latest USDA/FDA Meat-ing

Earlier this week, scientists, entrepreneurs, and concerned members of the public got together to discuss the future of cell-based (also called “cultured” and “lab-grown”) meat during a joint meeting put on by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the FDA news release, the meeting was intended to “focus on the potential hazards, oversight considerations, and labeling of cell cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.”

The FDA held the first meeting on cultured meat back in July, and while it succeeded in starting the conversation around regulation of meat grown outside an animal, not much was concluded. From the people I spoke to who attended the meeting, everyone agreed that something had to be done to regulate this new edible technology, but no one could agree exactly what — or even what to call it.

Watching recordings from the meeting and scanning through Twitter, one topic seemed to be the most divisive, contentious, and downright critical: labeling. It’s where I think that the real stakes (steaks?) are: nomenclature will be a determining factor in consumer perception of this new technology. Here are a few interesting points that came up during the meeting:

Labeling is actually a health concern

“We cell-based food producers do need to use the terms ‘fish’ and ‘meat’,” said Michael Selden, the CEO of cultured seafood company Finless Foods. “If one is allergic to animal-based seafood, that person has a high probability that they’ll be allergic to the seafood made with our technology.”

His company is working to create fish meat that is identical, on a cellular level, to traditional fish. If they succeed, labeling cultured salmon something like “cell-based artificial salmon product,” consumers with a life-threatening allergy to salmon might not realize that it posed just as big a threat.

Given, not all that many consumers are allergic to meat and seafood. But it’s still an important point: cultured meat is meat on a molecular level.

Photo: Flickr, by Adactio

Should labeling address how the product is made?

“It’s clear that consumers care about the way that their food is produced,” said Liz Holt of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. If cultured meat is required to disclose all the substances that went into it, should traditional meat be held to the same standards?

As of now, meat companies can choose whether or not to display information about the animal’s life and diet, such as “grass-fed” or “free-range.” They don’t have to disclose what the animal ate, or where it was raised.

Some consumers might not want to know exactly what type of life the cow in their bargain ground beef had before making its way onto their plate. Specht’s point shows that more information is generally good — but sometimes the consumer doesn’t want or need it.

Cell-based meat wants its own labels

Both sides of the table agreed on one thing: cultured meat should be labeled differently than traditional meat. Cultured meat startups want to indicate to the consumer that their product is meat, but is also different than meat from a slaughtered animal.

Peter Licari, CTO of JUST, said that there should be a regulatory nomenclature that “sufficiently differentiates cell-cultured products from traditional meat products but appropriately acknowledges these products as meat.”

What exactly that elusive final term will be — one that effectively communicates both that the product is meat, but not meat from a slaughtered animal — isn’t clear. But companies and regulatory bodies need to figure it out pretty quickly. JUST is still planning to be the first company to bring cultured meat to market by the end of this year, and Finless Foods will launch its cell-based tuna in 2019. By 2021 Mosa Meats and Memphis Meats will join them.

Isha Datar of New Harvest said it best, speaking at the meeting: “This is not just a product, but a new paradigm for food production.” Now the FDA and USDA need to figure out what to call it.