Anti-Vegan Rhetoric

A vegan sausage by any other name would smell as sweet. Yet France has recently amended its agriculture bill to ban the use of so-called ‘meat and dairy terms’ to describe plant-based products that serve as meat substitutes. These include patties made from soybeans, and dairy alternatives made from oats, coconuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, and soy. The words in question include ‘sausage’, ‘steak’, ‘burger’, ‘milk’, and ‘cheese’. The use of these to describe vegan products will now be subject to fines of up to 300,000 Euros.In defence of this new bill, the French politician and farmer Jean Baptiste Moreau tweeted that:

‘it is important to combat false claims. Our products must be designated correctly.’

Moreau is completely right to highlight the importance of combatting false claims. But the false claims are his own...

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