The use of terms such as “veggie burger” and “vegan sausage” may be prohibited under the new rules proposed by the European Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture.

During the vote, the Committee suggested that the names currently used for meat products and meat products should be assigned exclusively to products containing meat. These designations include, for example, “steak”, “sausage”, “escalope”, “burger”, “hamburger”.

This proposal reflects the recent ruling of the European Court of Justice regarding milk, which states that the terms “whey”, “cream”, “butter”, “cheese” and “yogurt” are assigned to dairy products and cannot be used to denote vegetable products such like soy or tofu. In a case submitted to the European Court by a German court with the participation of the German food company TofuTown, the European Court decided that existing EU laws protect animal products.

TofuTown sold herbal products with names such as Tofu Soybean Oil and Vegetarian Cheese. According to the company, this indicated that customers were not misled, because the origin of the products was clear from the name. However, the German Association for the Suppression of Unfair Competition, believes that the promotion of these products violates the applicable laws of the European Union.

In its decision, the court noted that, in principle, for the purposes of appropriate advertising and marketing, the relevant legislation leaves the name “milk” exclusively for milk of animal origin. The laws in force in the EU fix names like “cream”, “butter”, “cheese” and “yogurt” only for dairy products, i.e. products derived from natural milk.