Europe

This is EU-wide, not just how good your local options are.

Also, this would otherwise be an open door to degrade your meat-eating products. In Denmark (and I guess EU), we'd been fighting for "cheese" to only be made of 100% cheese, or "juice" being 100% fruits. If you start to allow some of these ultra-processed foods being labeled as something vaguely like meat, everyone will suffer from falling food quality, as these products will sneak their way in.

The point is to protect the meat industry throughout Europe from the growing interest in veggie options. This is why vegan movements are screwed, "disgruntled farmers" will just get their governments to back them up because they rather lobby for the same old than change.

It's not much, but if, say, you are a fast food chain named Burger Queen, you might remove vegan options altogether because your very name can get you sued for offering anything that looks like a burger but isn't. Other fast food chains also have to consider whether simply eliminating the option with a black strip than coming up with a whole new category for them. It's an intimidation tactic that reflects the growing shift in political composition of the parties that make up the EU.

Sure, why not

All in favor for the new vegger, say Aye

Both meat and veggie patties are sold as 'burgers' in the EU. Not always of course - the naming may vary, but this one is fairly common in my area.

How quickly Lemmy turns on the EU when they do something you don’t like.

It's almost like a thing can be praised for its positive aspects and at the same time criticised for its negative aspects.

“Vegan burger” doesn’t tell me what’s in it. Could be fucking sawdust.

"Sausage" doesn't tell you what's in it either. Probably pork, but could be beef. Probably some amount of rusk, also. It's almost like you have to check the packaging for other words.

Could be fucking marbles. Could be fucking Legos. Could be fucking quick set drywall compound. Could be fucking grass clippings. Could be fucking old math textbooks. Could be the fucking Queen's used linens.

Except none of those make any fucking sense. You know what does make sense? Fucking vegan burger.

How quickly Lemmy turns on the EU when they do something you don’t like.

That's how democracy works. Just because something does something good doesn't mean you have to ignore and accept the bad.

Something you have to realize is that the meat lobby has been heavily lobbying for this for years. This has nothing to do with consumers. Just like with vegan cheese, this will only make the product names more confusing. There used to be products called 'vegan cheese'. Perfectly clear what it is - just plant-based cheese alternative. Now you can't legally name a product 'vegan cheese', so instead they're called 'vegan slices' (if they come in slices) or other nonsense like 'plant-based product', which tells you absolutely nothing until you read the description.

I live on Brussels. I know eurocrats. Corruption is rife, industry lobbyists are honoured guest, champagne is cheap at the mickey bar (named after the funny chairs) in the European Parliament. The head of the EU expressly required an apartment inside the commission where she enjoy extraterritoriality. The police cannot search there for her multiple corruption affairs.

Meanwhile our hospitals are shit, they just spent billions in F-35. They scraped the money for homeless people to be sheltered during freezing winter.

If you thought Brussels was less corrupted than London Washington or moskow I have bad news for you

It's an outrage that they even spent a second on such bullcrap. Sawdust isn't legally food and nothings stops you for reading the ingredient list.

This is called the “relative privation fallacy” - where it’s stated or implied that action shouldn’t be taken on one issue because larger issues also exist. It’s like suggesting that the police shouldn’t try to catch pickpockets because unsolved murders exist.

The truth is that it’s possible for organisations to work on multiple fronts at once and that making rules around food labelling doesn’t imply that “the world is[…] burning” isn’t also something that’s being worked on.

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?

I care that the government cares (or more specifically that it was bribed to do so by lobby groups)

Vegetarian or not, you should care about this. Propping up the meat and dairy industry is not in the interests of the public. This move is part of an agenda by the meat and dairy industry to deceive the public into thinking there's something "natural" about the modern meat processing industry. It's bullshit and if we had a government that actually worked in our interests instead of that of the fat cats, it would be the meat and dairy industry being forced to change their labelling, to highlight to the public the real costs of meat consumption.