Paul McCartney has joined calls for the EU to reject efforts to ban the use of terms such as “sausage” and “burger” for vegetarian foods.
The former Beatle has joined eight British MPs who have written to the European Commission arguing that a ban approved in October by the European parliament would address a nonexistent problem while slowing progress on climate goals.
The new rules would spell the end the use of terms such as steak, burger, sausage or escalope when referring to products made of vegetables or plant-based proteins. Suggested alternatives include the less appetising “discs” or “tubes”.
McCartney said: “To stipulate that burgers and sausages are ‘plant-based’, ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ should be enough for sensible people to understand what they are eating. This also encourages attitudes which are essential to our health and that of the planet.”
The musician is one of the world’s most prominent advocates of a vegetarian diet. He and his late wife founded the Linda McCartney plant-based foods brand in 1991 and he and their daughters Mary and Stella launched the global “Meat Free Monday” campaign to encourage people to eat less meat.
The EU is set to decide whether to ban wording for plant-based and vegetarian foods following lobbying by the meat industry. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
Linda McCartney sausages and burgers have been part of a global trend of increased interest in products to replace meat, even if investment has waned since a bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet with the growth of plant-based products has come a backlash, particularly from the politically powerful farming and meat distribution industries, which are worried about the potential effects of lower demand on jobs.
The European parliament voted 355–247 to ban “meat-related” names from being used on plant-based products. According to Euronews, Céline Imart, a French member of the centre-right European People’s party and proponent of the ban, told the parliament: “I accept that steak, cutlet or sausage are products from our livestock farms. Full stop. No laboratory substitutes, no plant-based products.”
The letter signed by the McCartney family and the British MPs argued that the EU rules could force Britain into changes as well, because the markets and regulation are still so intertwined despite the UK’s departure from the EU.
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The EU has a longstanding “geographical indication” system of preventing businesses from trading off the names of products associated with specific places, such as champagne (north-east France), Kalamata olives (southern Greece) or Parma ham (northern Italy). But the attempt to limit the use of generic terms is more controversial.
Many of the terms that would be banned have malleable meanings. For instance, the Collins dictionary defines a sausage firstly in relation to meat but secondly as “an object shaped like a sausage”. Even more problematically for a ban, the primary definition of “burger” is given as a “flat round mass of minced meat or vegetables”.
The eight MP signatories to the letter include the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the former Green party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.
