While we are deep in a climate crisis and innovative foodtech companies work hard to deliver more sustainable food choices to EU consumers, the European Parliament believes that restricting the naming of such products protects consumers from mistaking plant-based meat alternatives from their animal-based equivalents.
In October 2025, in the European Parliament, MEPs voted to introduce a new definition of meat as “edible parts of animals” and specify that names such as steak, escalope, sausage or burger must be reserved exclusively for products containing meat and must exclude cell-cultured products.
This follows the European Court of Justice ruling in 2017 that disallowed plant-based products being labeled with dairy names such as ‘milk’, ‘butter’ ‘yogurt’ or ‘cheese, even with clarifying terms, because the EU law reserves these terms for animal products.
This is an insult to consumer intelligence. Consumers have long understood that there’s no chick in chickpeas. No egg in eggplant. And no goose in gooseberry. We know the difference between chocolate milk and milk chocolate.
If the aim is to remove confusion for consumers, this move could prove counter-productive as various manufacturers come up with different names to describe similar products, making like for like comparisons that much harder.
The EU does seem to be behind the curve on this one. Other major markets including the USA, most parts of Asia and Australia are much less restrictive on meat and dairy terms for plant-based alternatives. And consumers there have not been confused between dairy milk, oat milk and soy milk. They’ve simply voted with their conscience and their taste-buds!
