Haha yeah awesome real problems getting solved by serious politicians here, guys! If you can actually get your hands on any real meat without paying an arm and a leg for it what the actual fuck are we doing here lads what the fuck are these fucking politicians doing???
The world is on fire, the economy is in the shitter globally, there are multiple ongoing genocides, facism is on the rise again, and we’re wiggling our dicks around talking about whether you can call veggie burgers “burgers”? Are you serious? WHO CARES???
Is this bring your kid to work day and they let the kids do a vote for a change instead as a treat? Is this a joke?? What motherfucker is getting into politics to make sure “hey those damn vegans better not call anything a burger”.
These poncy little briefcase-botherers need a hobby or something because this is absolutely the biggest case of dicking around on the job I’ve ever heard of. Ridiculous. Stupid. A joke. Pathetic. Childish. Vapid. Can we get some adults in the EU Parliament please?
Or.
We could tackle multiple problems at once. Why does it have to be a this-or-that thing?
Because resources must be prioritized. There simply are more pressing matters to tend to.
This is a non-issue and should have the lowest priority as it’s pandering to a lobby and will likely result in backfiring because more creative names will pop up, possibly leading to even more acceptance of vegan products 😁
Honestly, coming up with a better name would be great. It would likely help the vegan products as well
I’m totally in favour of solving multiple problems at once.
Personally, I do not view this as a problem. My issue is with the EU Parliament wasting time with this in place of anything that I perceive as an actual problem.
If you think that calling veggie burgers “burgers” is a problem worth their time and effort, more power to you 👍
To me this is also a non problem. But if they can solve it just so they can move on, that’d be great
Voting the way an industry told them to vote is not solving anything. Shouldn’t have been considered worthy of a vote at all.
This is in a very literal way not a problem though. They were just bribed by the meat industry.
I’m paying 50% income taxes to pay for a bunch of cronies to chitchat about this bullcrap. Meanwhile they just scraped the money to shelter homeless people during winter
Welcome to the European Union. Solving non-issues is what they do all day.
why are they doing this shit when there are so many problems in the world?
because they already participated in those problems.
In reality, it’s because the farming lobby is the biggest lobby inside the EU. This is an easy “win” that MEPs can use to get beef farmers to vote for them again.
Same reason CAP will never be reformed.
Another shitty lobby demand became regulation just like that. Besides, protecting the label „burger“? Really? You know what I‘ll just call them sandwiches from now on. Fuck that.
Meanwhile Brussels city just scrapped the money to shelter homeless when it’s freezing
It’s an odd one, because we’ve had veggie burgers for as long as I can remember.
Exactly. Veggie burgers are waaay older than any “plant based meat” products. Haloumi is at least 500 years old. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were haloumi burgers before the word burger existed. And I can’t imaging it took long after the word became used for meat sandwiches, someone also used it for a vegetarian variant.
There’s at least two more votes at different levels before this becomes regulation.
People don’t really understand how EU works
To be fair, the media usually does a real shit job of explaining it.
If they explained things they wouldn’t be able to sell panic, fear or anger as easily.
That’s true
You can still call them burger. You just cannot sell them as burgers. So unless you sell vegan burgers for a living, this does not affect you whatsoever.
It does affect me to know that my tax money is used by these bunch of fucks to discuss bullshit like that.
My grandma died of anemia because she was unfed in her retirement home but these bunch of privilege motherfuckers have the time to discuss vegan burgers? Bitch please
I mean, it’ll be harder to search for “burger” on my supermarket’s website to find vegetarian alternatives to burgers. They’ll get more expensive because they have to relabel things. And my EP representatives have to waste their time on this instead of important issues.
A lot of companies sell vegan burgers, though.
If they have a line of burgers, some of which have meat in them and some don’t, what are they supposed to do? Keep two different brands separately, putting their fish, chicken and bovine burgers under one brand and others under another? Or just ditch the word “burger” altogether?
Nah fuck that. They‘re just sandwiches anyway. This might not affect me directly but it‘s still bullshit overregulation and should be boycotted because who is to tell where it will end? Next thing you know they prohibit gender speech as well. I hate everything about this.
Next thing you know they prohibit gender speech as well.
In some german states they already have prohibit gender speech in public institutions, including schools and universities.
It’s affecting me that I’m paying 50% income tax to pay for a bunch of crony politicians to chitchat about such bullshit
From the eu Parliament document: *3. ‘Meat products’ means processed products resulting from the processing of meat or from the further processing of such processed products, so that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has the characteristics of fresh meat. Names that fall under Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that are currently used for meat products and meat preparations shall be reserved exclusively for products containing meat.
These names include, for example:
- Steak
- Escalope
- Sausage
- Burger
- Hamburger
- Egg yolk
- Egg white*
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2025-0161_EN.html Use ctrl+f “burger” to find it in the text.
This not only affects vegetarian food, but also salmon steak for example. It’s a populist political move that doesn’t seem to be backed up by any linguistic science, as if mystery sausages haven’t been a thing for centuries. As long as it looks like a sausage, it is a sausage imo. It’s also not law yet, the member states still have to approve those amendements.
Ps, this gave me an idea for possible vegetarian branding: names like “not a burger” seem to still be allowed, so a line of foodstuffs called “not a sausage” etc might be fun.
Ps, this gave me an idea for possible vegetarian branding: names like “not a burger” seem to still be allowed, so a line of foodstuffs called “not a sausage” etc might be fun.
That’s definitely gonna happen, there’s already a plant drink brand named “this is not m*lk” (including the censoring) in Germany, as here a similar ban is already in effect for the word “milk” to exclude soy milk / oat milk / …
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They should just change one or two letters or make them phonetically similar. Such as borgir, sossich, wurzt and stek.
Edit: Been having issues with Lemmy today. That’s probably why it triple posted my comment.
In Germany I’ve seen some vegan restaurants replace some letter with “v” for vegan.
Like “vurst” instead of “wurst” (sausage) or “vleish” instead of “fleish” (meat).
Which is really funny because soy milk, oat milk, and almond milk have existed as such for literally hundreds of years.
And etymologically cow’s milk actually takes its name from those, not the other way around.I was apparently misremembering something. It’s still a fact though that the word milk has been associated with alternate plant based versions for literal centuries.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
And etymologically cow’s milk actually takes its name from those, not the other way around
Source? That seems unlikely
Yeah I was misremembering something saw at some point. The other point still stands though.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
Looking forward to “extruded logs” hitting the shelves
This not only affects vegetarian food, but also salmon steak for example.
Where are you getting this from? In the document you linked they define meat as “edible parts of the animals” and I can’t find any wording in here that would exclude fish from being meat.
I found a moment to look up that edible part that you found: "For the purposes of this part, ‘meat’ means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, " So no, they do not define meat as the edible parts of the animals, they define meat as the edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I etc. You can’t just ignore parts of a definition.
1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 is:
“Meat” means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8, including blood.
1.2. “Domestic ungulates” means domestic bovine (including Bubalus and Bison species), porcine, ovine and caprine animals, and domestic solipeds.
1.3. “Poultry” means farmed birds, including birds that are not considered as domestic but which are farmed as domestic animals, with the exception of ratites.
1.4. “Lagomorphs” means rabbits, hares and rodents.
1.5. “Wild game” means:
—
wild ungulates and lagomorphs, as well as other land mammals that are hunted for human consumption and are considered to be wild game under the applicable law in the Member State concerned, including mammals living in enclosed territory under conditions of freedom similar to those of wild game; and
—
wild birds that are hunted for human consumption.
1.6. “Fanned game” means farmed ratites and farmed land mammals other than those referred to in point 1.2.
1.7. “Small wild game” means wild game birds and lagomorphs living freely in the wild.
1.8. “Large wild game” means wild land mammals living freely in the wild that do not fall within the definition of small wild game.
Afaik fish is not considered meat, definitely not in colloquial language. With a quick search I found another EU article which mentions meat and fish, and they list meat and fishery products as being different things: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/hygiene-rules-for-food-of-animal-origin.html
What that article includes under meat: “Meat, including domestic ungulates (bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine species); poultry and lagomorphs (farmed birds, rabbits, hares and rodents); farmed and wild game; minced meat, meat preparations and mechanically separated/recovered meat; and meat products.”
I mean… if they meant “meat” literally as flesh/muscle fiber, then eggs would not meet the definition either.
However, wouldn’t that definition also technically mean that milk can also be categorized as a meat product? Same for honey. Someone also mentioned peanut butter in another comment, is butter considered meat as well since it often comes from milk?
And what about broth/stock? …chicken stock is common, does that mean that now it should be considered a meat product and you can no longer have vegetable stock?
Investing time and money into producing meat alternatives for the growing market share of vegans and vegetarians? Hell no, better throw our money on a dumpster fire of lobbyism and denial.
Just out of spite i will from now on refer to milk as cow drink.
Milk is filtered blood
Cool still not buying dead animal
This is what seems crazy to me, surely no one is changing what they buy based on this and who is really so dumb that they were confused by the vegan sausage not containing meat?
And even if, no one dies of eating a vegan sausage by mistake.
Not true. I made my racist uncle eat a vegan sausage once and he was almost offended to death
Generally no, but food allergies could cause death depending on the vegan alternative contents. Have a severe allergy to wheat, seitan is a no-go. Have a severe allergy to legumes, chickpeas and bean altertanives are a no-go.
However, I’ve never seen vegan alternatives not clearly labeled as vegan or meat alternative is some very obvious way. And the people I know with allergies severe enough to cause severe reactions read the ingredients carefully of everything they buy. And ask what’s in things before eating something prepared by somebody else.
I guess the most commonly used word to describe a poop in Swedish can’t be used anymore. Bajskorv, or poop sausage.
This decision is beyond stupid and smells of corruption. Sausage, burger etc. have been used to describe the shape of things for decades. I could agree that plant beef, or halumi pork would be an issue, but not this.
Steakn’t
Only beef should be burgers, chicken is sandwiches.
What if there’s no bread? Is it a still a sandwich? Same with the beef
Bread is irrelevant. The patty makes the burger.
Evidence: You can order a McDonald burger without buns.
I’m asking because of chicken then it’s a sandwich (what the person I’m replying to said). But sandwich has to have bread, unlike burger.
So either in missing something, or it makes no sense
Super dumb, very American english take. In Australia anything you put in a burger bun is a burger.
Beef burger ✅
Chicken burger ✅
Mushroom burger ✅
Halloumi burger ✅
Veggie burger ✅
Burger? Is the bun made of meat too?
Fuck I wish it was
There was a burger in two chicken patties instead of bread being sold as a keto-friendly alternative at KFC
Sounds over the top but also something I want to try
“Our data shows that almost 70% of European consumers understand these names as long as products are clearly labelled vegan or vegetarian,”
How fucking stupid are your customers if “almost 70%” can work out that a vegan sausage doesn’t contain meat?
But honestly, the vegan sausages and steaks are not sausages and stakes, even if they are still ultra-processed like their meat counterparts. They really should invent different names that are used for these products.
Why?
I want something vegan that looks and tastes like sausage. I want to have an easy time finding such a product in the store. I look for a product that says “I’m basically a sausage, but vegan”. I buy a vegan sausage.
What’s the problem with that?
I am all for allowing vegan sausages to just be called sausage. But I am not the biggest fan of vegan steaks getring the same treatment. Mostly just because a steak is by definition a slice of meat. Patties are fine since they are just ground minced stuff made into a certain shape kinda like sausages.
What I’m interested in is - how is this supposed to work with all the different languages in all EU countries? For example in finnish “steak” and “patty” both translate as “pihvi”. On top of that words like “kasvispihvi” (vegetable steak/patty) have been in use since early 1900s. Why the hell should EU be able to affect our language to a degree of banning commonly used words everyone understands? Absolutely nobody would think kasvispihvi contains meat, and it’s absurd to even suggest that it couldn’t be used in marketing
Don’t really care about steaks, but burgers, sausages and many others are really established with their veggie and vegan variants. It’s completely nonsensical to ban them.
I mean you can just call the burgers “patties” which we do in my country anyway. Burger refers to the whole sandwich, not the patty. If they regulate the word “patty” to require meat, I hope farmers will drop cow patties at their doorsteps.
Not a fan of them doing it to the word sausage though, it’s clearly a form factor above all else.
But a restaurant should be allowed to sell me a veggie burger. Why on earth should we call it a burger for beef patties, chicken patties, veal patties and fish patties, but not for bean patties, veggie patties or plant based meat patties like impossible? The only thing different to a “burger” are ingredients which are already swapped out for different ones on a regular basis.
Tbh chicken, fish, pork should also not count as burger if they want to actually preserve purity.
Personally I think the burger should refer to the shape of the sandwich, regardless of what you put inside it, and we should call the patty a patty, regardless of what it’s made of. This luckily is what we’re doing where I live, but if that means that restaurant-prepared veggie burger can’t be called a veggie burger, that’s bullshit. I thought it meant specifically the patties (which in American are called burgers and if anyone has authority on naming here it’s the Americans, as they’ve perfected the art of fa(s)t foods).
The definition even includes “turtle steak” which I didn’t even know was a thing… and also fish, which has very different taste and properties than beef steak, for example. I feel that the labeling of “steak” should always come with what is the steak made of anyway… and once you do that then I don’t see what’s the harm of allowing for more exotic sources of protein.
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How would they even define a sausage anyway, meat content? Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product - probably more than most sausages actually given how much filler they put in them.
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to “emulsified high fat offal tubes” to more accurately describe them?
And blood sausage is a very good example to show that “sausage” is an established appendix to show the shape of something, while specifying what it’s made of with a term beforehand. Pork sausage. Beef sausage. Turkey sausage. Blood sausage. This works so well that I can invent words of artificial things and still convey what I mean by that: Paper sausage. Ice sausage. Cloth sausage. Glass sausage. …Chickpea sausage. Broccoli sausage. Bean sausage.
It’s a non-brainer. The legislators are being deliberately obtuse here.
Also traditionally it would’ve been in an intestine, but they’ve been making other sorts of casings for meat-based sausages for a while anyway, so that argument against plant based sausages is dead in the water too IMO
Or shall we rename all the cheap sausages in shops to “emulsified high fat offal tubes” to more accurately describe them?
Nah, this would hurt meat lobbyist’ feelings.
Where do you live that blood sausage has more animal product than regular sausages (where the filler is often bone mass and such)? Blood sausage filler where I come from is usually barley groats (or some other format of barley. Barley is really universal apparently).
Picked out a random one they sell here. Contents: barley groats, “food blood” (19%), pork rind, pork (8%), roasted onion, pork fat, salt, various spices
These are generally listed in rough order of importance, so blood sausage is basically more barley groats than animal products.
Now for comparison, the cheapest smoked sausage out there (the sandwich sausage variety, not grill or oven). Contents: chicken meat mass (39%), pork (18%), pork fat, water, cheese (6%), various shit you don’t even want to think or know about.
It’s utterly cheap shit (the chicken meat mass of course includes shit like soft-ish bones ground up, etc), but even this is more animal-y than blood sausages.
Well now blood sausage is not a sausage too despite being almost entirely animal product
The EU document specifically mentions that blood based products counts as meat, so blood sausage is fine.
That’s fucking stupid. Blood isn’t meat, it’s blood. How can something liquid be meat?
In the end it’s a legal document and the terms are defined for the purpose of the regulation, not necessarily how the terms are used in daily life.
Hot take, I don’t think legal documents should get a pass to redefine words and use them differently than how they’re used in daily life. I’m sure they do it on purpose specifically to make it harder for laymen to parse those types of documents, which is stupid.
It would be easier and clearer to write this regulatory document using common parlance, and then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Is milk and honey also a meat product? they are stored/produced in the animal too, like blood. Can I call it sausage if I fill a casing with them?
It’d be ironic to be able to call “sausage” to something that tastes and feels nothing like a sausage just because it happens to come from an animal… but being unable to call sausage to something that does look and taste like a sausage but happens to not come from an animal.
So we should call them vegetarian protein cylinders instead of sausages?
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin
70% is pretty good, sadly.
Cutting red tape, huh?
I doubt it’ll actually go through.
They’re clearly labeled “veggie”, “vegitarian” or “vegan”, and consumers understand those labels to mean, at minimum, no meat.
“Sausage”, I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage. I don’t agree, but I can understand the argument being made.
“Burger”, however. Is distinctly different than “hamburger”, in fact, we often substitute the prefix to fit whatever it is. (Not that hamburgers are made of ham, i know it comes from hamburg) Such as, “fish-burger” or “chicken-burger”, so why would “veggie-burger” be any more confusing than “fish-burger”?
I thought you could stuff anything into a bun shaped piece of bread and call it a burger.
“Sausage”, I can see how you could argue it has to contain meat to be called a sausage.
I don’t; the defining feature of sausage isn’t that it’s meat, it’s the fact that it’s stuffed in a tube. If people want to grind up veggies and stuff them in a tube, why would that not be a veggie sausage?
grind up veggies and stuff them in a tube, why would that not be a veggie sausage?
Salad dildo
If its just “sausage” alone I think there is an expectation that it contains about 10% Legally Meat™ though. Otherwise it should have some addition to its name to show it is something else.
“Sausage”, is a traditional name of minced meat stuffed into a sleeve, It exists in numerous cultures all over the world, and the principle is the same. So an argument could be made, that “Sausage” is inherently viewed as a meat product by default. And could be confusing for consumers.
Again, I would also disagree with that argument, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made. Just because we disagree with something doesn’t mean it can’t be made.
I’ve never said something can’t be a “Veggie sausage”, like I said… It’s clearly labeled “Veggie”
It’s not just meat usually though.
It’s a mix of mostly meat, some flour or even vegetables (like onion) and seasoning. Sometimes you can even have cheesy sausages.
Some sausages here are as low as 11% of meat. Then again there is “product that’s comparable to meat” for a more significant portion, but rest flour and other things. You just can’t call minced ligaments and fat “meat” here but anyway I think sausages are more about the way they’re made and their shape than being made of meat
I am well aware. You don’t have to convince me of what I already think. I just said an argument can be made given the long lineage of the name “Sausage” and its respective local counterpart.
Regardless. Just to be super clear. As far as I’m concerned, EU can fuck off with this one, it’s not something that needs to be regulated on an EU level. Each member is perfectly capable of deciding themselves what can and can not be called “Sausage”.
This is just France trying to throw its weight around to appease their own farmers. Why they wanted to involve EU in it is beyond me.
Language is descriptive not prescriptive.
If “veggie sausage” conveys what I mean, then it’s perfectly acceptable language.
The only reason there’s even a question about this is because the meat industry is panicking.
Its not always clearly labeled tho. Last year my brother took me to a burger joint in Minneapolis and only after I thought the burger tasted very weird did I learn that it was an all vegan burger joint. Not complaining, but it should be clearly labeled what youre getting, IMO.
I think I know the place you’re talking about. I took my daughter there because she is vegetarian, but I can imagine that being offputting if you didn’t know ahead of time.
Cool so lets just put a label on anything that isn’t vegan. Problem solved.
You’re just making a really terrible, bad faith argument, for the sake of arguing, when the guy just wanted to share a situation where he was a bit confused as to what he was getting.
I would just enjoy having animal abuse products be labeled clearly but sure, you know me better than I know myself I guess?
I don’t think anyone is oblivious to the fact that burgers by default contains animal product. But I’m sure you’ll be the one to prove that wrong.
It should always be the case, even for places serving meat products. Alpha-gal syndrome is on the rise due to exploding tick populations, so when a restaurant advertises “gravy” it would be nice to know what kind it is. Another frustrating one is sausages - so many poultry or veggie sausages still use pig-based casings and either ignore it completely or list the ingredient as “collagen” and expect people to understand what that implies (collagen casing is almost always pork).
Same tact the meat lobbies used in the US.
Finally EU is back innovating! Oh wait 🤦♂️
another useless legislation, like how in the US, klobaucher wanted to do a “flag” legislation.
Seems a bit strange to expect EU Parliament to be an innovative body
It’s only a burger if it comes from the municipality of Cheeseberg.
