Home

Push to ban term ‘meat’ from plant based product labels anti-competitive, vegans say

Courtney GouldNCA NewsWire
Not Supplied
Camera IconNot Supplied Credit: News Corp Australia

Advocates of plant based diets say the Australian government does not need to intervene and change labelling laws to stop plant based alternatives using the term meat to market their products.

Instead, the federal government should focus on overhauling labelling for all products to ensure consumers have complete transparency of what is inside their food.

A parliamentary inquiry is currently reviewing the definitions of meat and other animal products, with a specific focus on plant based alternatives.

Ryan Alexander, co-founder of No Meat May, told the committee if the government were to look at vegan products, it must consider reviewing labelling on processed meat products also.

Get in front of tomorrow's news for FREE

Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.

READ NOW

“There‘s a lot of focused on plant based meat alternative ingredients because they are new and they’re unfamiliar to people and consumers,” he said.

“So people are looking at them with a fine tooth comb, but you go to your local Woolies now or Coles and have a look at processed meat products.

NEWS: Olivia Lawson
Camera IconThe NFF wants the government to act and stop the use of meat on products derived from plants. Zoe Phillips Credit: News Corp Australia

“Many of them over there have 27 ingredients in them … But we‘re not looking at that because they’re products that we’ve been raised on and their products we’re familiar with.”

Vegans Australia told the committee it supported honest labelling but insisted any plant based products found to have misleading labelling could be dealt with under current legislation.

“Just like people do in regular English, the food code takes into account the context of labelling,” director Greg McFarlane said.

“For example, a confectionery product can be labelled bananas, even that contains no bananas. Ginger Beer is not considered a beer, soy milk and soy ice cream are not considered dairy products. Peanut butter is allowed. Even Alan‘s milk bottles is okay even though it is neither milk nor a bottle. In these cases, the labels are unlikely to mislead because the context is clear.”

But the National Farmers Federation remains unconvinced. It wants the government to act to prohibit the industry from using the term meat and use livestock imagery on their packaging.

“We believe the current use of language and imagery on some products associated with meat and dairy products and link to describe products that contain no meat or dairy is misleading for consumers,” chief executive Tony Maher told the inquiry.

“This is, in our view, potentially unethical, misleading, and confusing.”

Mr Alexander argued a prohibition to remove the term meat from plant based alternatives was to sidestep competition in the market.

“It seems like protectionism to me or anti competitive because to our knowledge, there is no confusion in labelling, and there’s no evidence to that effect.”

OLD DAIRY at Whittlesea
Camera IconVegan advocates say the NFF’s push is anticompetitive. PICTURE: ZOE PHILLIPS Credit: News Corp Australia

Mr Maher said the NFF denied the push was anticompetitive.

“The red meat sector, and in chicken and pork and fish, will be happy to compete and back their product,” the chief executive said.

“But at the moment, it feels like there‘s a confusing message being sent, and potentially leveraging off some of those products.”

In a submission to the inquiry, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wrote it had not received information that the labelling of plant based substitutes products was an issue to consumer detriment.

From January 2020 to June 2021, the ACCC had only received eleven complaints of around 564,000 total contacts over the same period.

“The ACCC has received very few reports about consumers being misled by the labelling used for plant-based substitute products,”

“The few we do receive are reports from consumers and industry stakeholders in sectors that produce meat or dairy products raising concern that plant based substitute products use animal product related descriptors

“The information provided by these contacts demonstrated that they had not been misled by the labelling of the products, as they were fully aware of what the relevant product was made of when viewing it for sale.”

Originally published as Push to ban term ‘meat’ from plant based product labels anti-competitive, vegans say

Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.

Sign up for our emails