Will he pass the stage of the Council of State? The government said on Monday that it had prepared a new decree to ban the use of names like “steak” or “grill” to designate vegetable protein products, determined to impose this differentiation. The text is a long-standing demand from animal industry players, who believe that terms like “vegetable ham”, “vegan sausage” or “vegetarian bacon” can confuse consumers.
A first decree had already been issued in June 2022 but the latter was suspended in summary proceedings by the Council of State. The highest administrative court, which has not yet ruled on the merits of the case, seized the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in July 2023 on questions of interpretation of European regulations on labeling.
Transparency
The Ministry of Agriculture claims to have taken into account the remarks of the Council of State to prepare a new text, including in particular lists specifying the terms referred to, without waiting for the outcome of the procedure with the CJEU. He notified the European Commission at the end of August, which has very detailed rules in terms of labeling.
The text “is an issue of transparency and loyalty which responds to a legitimate expectation of consumers and producers”, estimated the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau, quoted in a press release. For Guillaume Hannotin, lawyer for the organization Protéines France, which defends manufacturers in the vegetable protein sector and had requested the suspension of the first decree, the new text remains problematic.
It remains, according to him, in contradiction with European regulations on labeling, which, in the absence of a legal definition as for milk, accepts usage or descriptive names for alternatives to meat. “The term ‘vegetable steak’ has been used for more than 40 years,” he remarked to AFP. And certain words evoking a form, such as sausage, or a way of cooking “are difficult to replace”.