EU Ban on ‘Meat’ Terminology for Plant-Foods, Newstalk Radio

17.06.2026

The EU has passed a ban on using animal product terminology such as ‘pork’, ‘chicken’, veal’, ‘turkey’, ‘duck’, ‘lamb’, ‘steak’ and ‘bacon’ to market plant-based foods. It defines the term ‘meat’ as ‘edible parts of animals’ and has also banned its use to refer to lab-grown or cultivated products. Terminology referring to the shape or preparation of food such as nugget, burger etc, have not been banned.

Anton Savage invited our Director, Sandra Higgins, to discuss the issue. Also, on the show was Denis Drennan, President of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association, who argues that the ban should also have included words such as sausage and burger. The ICMSA, along with all the other farming lobby groups in Ireland and the EU, actively campaigned for ban on animal product terminology for plant based replacements, claiming that they ‘deliberately camouflage’, and that corporations producing vegan friendly products are attempting to ‘smuggle’ synthetic or plant based alternatives past a sceptical public, appropriating the names of the foods they are trying to ‘replace and supplant’.

Some of the barriers to transitioning to vegan living, including the consumption of a plant-based diet, are habit, tradition, and culture. In these respects, plant-based replacements for animal products can be convenient and helpful for people when they first go vegan. They do not challenge us to alter our eating habits to an enormous degree but it can be said that they maintain the idea that animal flesh, fish, dairy and eggs are food, rather than forcing us to eliminate the very notion that anything to do with another living being is a commodity for us to use. It is this belief, that we are entitled to use other animals, which is the greatest barrier to justice for other animals. It is the root of the problem other animals face from us. Arguably, a wholefoods diet composed of legumes, vegetables, grains, fruit, and nuts, has many advantages, not least that it eliminates any reference to other the products and bodies of other animals.

The ban on animal flesh terminology follows a previous ban restricting the use of terms milk, butter, cheese, and yoghurt in reference to plant-based replacements for dairy products.

At this time in our history where we now kill over 90,000 billion land animals and trillions of sea animals to cater for the taste of eight billion humans, when we are facing a threat to the very existence of life from the climate crisis, and where there are daily accounts of war, intolerance, injustice and atrocities on our news channels, it seems trite that the EU would even countenance discussion of banning traditional food terms for the growing plant-based food manufacturing industry. They have very obviously done so under duress from the animal farming lobby that feels threatened by the presence of manufactured plant foods on our supermarket shelves.

The industry claims that the rationale for the ban is fear of damage to its industry and protection of the public against misleading food labelling. They are correct in fearing that veganism is a threat to animal agriculture: while we support the non-animal farming industry, our aim is to completely eliminate the use of other animals by humans for any reason including their use as food, clothing, entertainment, labour, research, and education. However, plant-food manufacturers are not attempting to mislead anyone and several surveys in the UK and other European countries show that consumers are not misled when they buy plant-based products.

The animal agriculture industry has never been afraid to mislead consumers into believing that animal products are essential for human health, environmentally sustainable and ethical.

Now that the ban on using animal product terminology for plant-based products has passed, the question is ‘does it really matter’? The previous ban on the use of dairy terminology for plant-based equivalents, forced manufacturers to rebrand which no doubt was costly and inconvenient. But vegans still colloquially refer to the plant-based products they buy and consume as milk, butter, cream, yoghurt, and cheese even though the packaging displays unwieldy labels such as ‘oat drink’.

The conversation is worth revisiting and we (vegans) should ask ourselves whether it is appropriate at all to use references to other animals on plant-based foods. When consumers use words like chicken, pork, veal etc, we do not think of the animals they were. We think of the products they have been tuned into. These words were coined to create a distance between animal flesh and the animal persons whose lives were taken, and whose exploited dead bodies or body parts are now for sale like any other commodity. Using terms like vegan chicken or vegan beef maintains the idea that other animals’ bodies are food. They are not. They are products and remains of sentient beings whose lives mattered to them, and whose lives and bodies are not ours to use. Perhaps it is time to ban these terms from our own personal use and advocate instead that the animal agriculture industry accurately label eggs, dairy, fish and flesh in ways that prevent the consumer from being misled by helping them to connect what they are about to pay for with the rights violations perpetrated unnecessarily and unjustly on sentient beings for profit.