The European Commission proposed banning 29 terms - like "bacon", "ribs" and "chicken" — for use in plant-based products on 16 July.
This move comes despite clear European Court of Justice rulings allowing the use of traditional meat terms for clearly labelled plant-based alternatives.
Last October, the ECJ ruled that member states cannot ban the use of traditional meat-related terms, such as “steak” or “sausage”. Unless they introduce legal names for specific food categories, they cannot prevent manufacturers of plant-based foods from using descriptive names borrowed from the world of meat.
And so, as set out in the proposed regulation, the commission stepped in to save European culture and history.
But consumers are not confused by plant-based labels.
According to the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), up to 80 percent of consumers believe that terms such as 'burger' or 'milk' should be permitted for clearly labelled plant-based products.
By adding new wording to Annex VII of Regulation 1308/2013, the commission has defined meat as “exclusively the edible parts of an animal" and reserved 29 terms for animal-based products only.
Objectives of introducing a ban on vegan ribs is to “enhance transparency”, but also to “ensure that consumers (…) can make well-informed choices”.
If the goal is transparency and consumer protection, clearer labelling on the health effects of meat — especially processed meat, which the WHO has classified as a Group 1 carcinogen alongside tobacco for 10 years now - would be more relevant than banning vegan steak.
It’s difficult to believe this proposal is purely about consumer protection.
More plausibly, it reflects pressure from influential agricultural lobbies like Copa-Cogeca, which represents large meat enterprises more than small-scale farmers.
The latter were interviewed by Lighthouse Reports in their 2023 investigation. In the same investigation, Copa-Cogeca's own secretary-general, Pekka Pesonen, admitted to Politico without shame that preserving small-scale farming is not realistic.
The ban proposal is a direct attack on the plant-based industry and on any attempt at meaningful food system transformation. And it’s been put into place thanks to meat and diary lobbyists, again, to waste time, drain energy, and distract people from working towards the desperately needed plant-based transition.
This forces already underfunded vegan organisations to divert limited resources away from meaningful advocacy.
This proposal is one of the many ways we are recently observing to delay, derail, and exhaust the very movement trying to bring about long-overdue change in European food systems and green transition in general.
The meat and dairy lobbies have done this before and they just succeeded again.
And the commission, despite being fully aware of the environmental, social, and public health cost of industrial animal farming, continues to sit at the table with them and allow it to dictate terms.
Those working to transform the food system must ask themselves: is a polite, apologetic advocacy strategy enough? Perhaps it is time to be bolder.
Rather than demanding cage-free farming or shorter transport times for animals, it may be worth demanding an end to factory farming or cutting subsidies for harmful animal farming and monoculture.
It seems that playing by the rules of the powerful agricultural lobby has achieved nothing.
Meat lobbyists can no longer be considered legitimate stakeholders in sustainability policy — they must be held accountable for obstructing progress on climate and health.
Organisations advocating for food system transformation in Brussels are increasingly on the defensive, forced to counter attacks and accusations that they are working “against farmers”, which is simply untrue.
But perhaps it’s time they stop defending and start fighting back.
The truth is that we are clearly losing the battle for food-system transformation, not because our arguments are weak, but because our opposition is powerful, rich and coordinated.
If we do not challenge this political imbalance directly — including questioning the commission’s cosy relationships with industry — we will keep losing ground while the world burns.
The only “historical” thing being preserved in the regulation is the systemic exploitation of animals, something we will be ashamed of in a few decades. And it’s destroying the environment and biodiversity, and posing threats to public health.
At a time when at least 10 percent of Europeans face food poverty, resources should be spent building sustainable, affordable food systems — not policing plant-based labels and slowing down the people and organisations who are actually trying to fix the food system.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Barbara Wolk is a policy and advocacy advisor at the Green REV Institute.
Barbara Wolk is a policy and advocacy advisor at the Green REV Institute.