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from the how-can-you-get-any-pudding-if-you-don't...-what? dept.
Missouri has prohibited producers of meat alternatives, such as lab-grown/cultured meat and plant-based fake meats, from using the term "meat" to describe products not derived from harvested livestock or poultry:
On Tuesday, Missouri becomes the first state in the country to have a law on the books that prohibits food makers to use the word "meat" to refer to anything other than animal flesh. This takes aim at manufacturers of what has been dubbed fake or non-traditional meat. Clean meat -- also known as lab-grown meat -- is made of cultured animal tissue cells, while plant-based meat is generally from ingredients such as soy, tempeh and seitan.
The state law forbids "misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry." Violators may be fined $1,000 and imprisoned for a year.
[...] The Missouri Cattlemen's Association, which worked to get the state law passed, has cited shopper confusion and protecting local ranchers as reasons for the legislation. "The big issue was marketing with integrity and...consumers knowing what they're getting," said Missouri Cattlemen's Association spokesman Mike Deering. "There's so much unknown about this."
Turtle Island Foods, which makes "Tofurky", has sued the state:
On Monday, the company that makes Tofurky filed an injunction in a Missouri federal court to prevent enforcement of the statute, alleging that the state has received no complaints about consumers befuddled by the term "plant-based meats" and that preventing manufacturers from using the word is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Plus, it pointed out, "meat" also refers to the edible part of nuts and fruit.
The statute "prevents the sharing of truthful information and impedes competition," according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. "The marketing and packaging of plant-based products reveals that plant-based food producers do not mislead consumers but instead distinguish their products from conventional meat products." The co-plaintiff is the Good Food Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
Deering said he was surprised by the suit, because the primary target of the law was lab-grown meat.
Also at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Oregon Live.
Previously: U.S. Cattlemen's Association Wants an Official Definition of "Meat"
Regulation Coming to Lab-Grown Meat
FDA Approves Impossible Burger "Heme" Ingredient; Still Wants to Regulate "Cultured Meat"
Related: FDA May Force Rebranding of Soy, Almond, et al. "Milks"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Thursday August 30 2018, @09:52AM (11 children)
I don't know about you, but all other things being equal, I'd opt for cultured bovine meat over real cow meat for the simple fact it's cleaner to grow stuff in vats than have them walk around in the fields covered in shit and eating god knows what... And it's not like I'm a vegetarian or something. I don't even eat my pees and carrots when mom isn't looking!
Seriously I haven't got a clue what they're thinking. You don't see people gut out lambs for gastric digestive juices to make yogurt or spoiling flour and water by waiting for the fungus to form for baking bread and brewing beer. So if people prefer eating yogurt from cultured bacteria and bread / beer from cultured yeast already, isn't it a really bad move for the cow farmers to want their product distinguishable from the cultured stuff? I mean, Americans can't stand seeing people not wearing gloves and hair nets in food preparation... What would happen when the cultured meat folks start running "This is how cows are raised; This is how we make cultured cow cells" ads?
Weird.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 30 2018, @10:09AM (4 children)
Eat, or rather, drink your pees, RamiK, and quit yer bitching. Good enough for Howard Hughes, good enough for you.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 30 2018, @04:09PM (3 children)
Spackman's law:
Eat solids
Drink liquids
Breathe gases
Don't get them mixed up.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday August 30 2018, @05:26PM (2 children)
In this case, it appears that 'pee' and 'pea' are getting mixed up. The latter is a vegetable often served with carrots, while the former is a colloquial term for urine.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 30 2018, @08:38PM (1 child)
No matter since I avoid both. I hope. What Taco Bell passes for Diet Cola might very well qualify as piss by some standards...
Regardless, people comment about my atrocious spelling all the time and it only gotten worse over the years so as far as I'm concerned the joke's on them for wasting their time on a hopeless cause :D
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(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday August 30 2018, @11:05PM
But the time's not wasted if there's a joke involved.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday August 30 2018, @12:05PM (4 children)
You don't see people [...] spoiling flour and water by waiting for the fungus to form for [...] brewing beer.
Cough.
Lambic [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 30 2018, @02:25PM (3 children)
Hate to burst your bauble but Lambic moved to cultured strains half a decade ago ( http://craftbeercellar.com/blog/blog/2013/03/06/a-tale-of-two-bretts-bruxellensis-and-lambicus/ [craftbeercellar.com] ). And btw, I actually have a friend that brews those and he says the cultures are much better than the "wild strains".
More importantly, they weren't really wild to begin with since the region been culturing them indirectly by "feeding" them only when they performed well. That is, poor tasting strains concentrated in certain areas were starved out since the locals didn't continue brewing there. Cultured by invisible hand if you will...
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 30 2018, @02:29PM
bubble... too much Darkest Dungeon.
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(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday August 30 2018, @05:07PM (1 child)
Lambic-style maybe, but in the EU, Lambic is a protected designation, and AFAIK requires that the beer has undergone spontaneous fermentation.
Pop this into your translation engine of choice:
https://www.horal.be/lambiek-geuze-kriek/juridische-bescherming [horal.be]
There is also this paper: PLOS|ONE: The Microbial Diversity of Traditional Spontaneously Fermented Lambic Beer [plos.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 30 2018, @08:26PM
As Camembert was. As Champagne is. As Meat will be... Look, I'm more interested in the quality of the produce rather than the local industrial protections the EU and US deploy to trade war as years go by. Would some people keep to traditional practices despite superior industrial techniques thanks to these protectionist nonsense? Sure. Would it be over quality? Never. It's always the industrial processes that end up being best. Sure, there's more room for fraud with modern processes. But that just means you need more regulations and oversight. And it's not like traditional producers don't end up exploiting new techniques to cheat as well. Look up how they fill up meat with water and such.
So, I'm sticking with my original statement. Should it succeed, people won't just get used to. They'll prefer it. And farmers distinguishing between their product and what will end up as the superior product are just doing themselves a disfavor in the long run.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 30 2018, @01:29PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves