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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 14 2019, @04:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the slow-roasting-grills-of-justice dept.

A federal judge on Tuesday roasted Arkansas' law banning makers of meatless meat products from using words such as "burger," "sausage," "roast," and "meat" in their labeling.
[...] Judge Kristine Baker, of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, granted a preliminary injunction that prevents the state from enforcing the law while the legal case is ongoing. In her order, Judge Baker made clear that the law appears to violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment—as Tofurky argued. She determined that the state will likely lose the case.
[...] "The State argues that Tofurky's labels for its plant-based products are inherently misleading because they use the names and descriptors of traditional meat items but do not actually include the product they invoke, including terms like 'chorizo,' 'hot dogs,' 'sausage,' and 'ham roast,'" Judge Baker noted. Such misleading or false labels would not be protected commercial speech under the First Amendment, the state claimed.

But Judge Baker essentially called that argument bologna.
[...] She went on to cite a ruling in a similar case that determined that "Under Plaintiffs' logic, a reasonable consumer might also believe that veggie bacon contains pork, that flourless chocolate cake contains flour, or that e-books are made out of paper."

"That assumption is unwarranted," she went on. "The labels in the record evidence include ample terminology to indicate the vegan or vegetarian nature of the products."
[...] Meat and dairy industry groups have been increasingly working to try to limit the use of terms like "milk" and "meat" in other states and contexts as meatless and diary-free products continue to grow in popularity. Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Dakota have similar anti-veggie-meat labeling laws. In Wisconsin, lawmakers have considered banning non-dairy products from using the word "milk," such as beverages labeled almond milk.

The latter issue led former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb to quip last year that "You know, an almond doesn't lactate." He said that the Food and Drug Administration is working on a guidance for the use of the term.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/judge-serves-up-sizzling-rebuke-of-arkansas-anti-veggie-meat-labeling-law/
Previous Stories:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/12/04/1425220
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/07/07/1443201
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/02/26/2315236


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @03:31AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @03:31AM (#932261)

    They are exacly named that to deceive the consumer. They are named that so it can be "proved" that you don't need real meat and milk because they might be able to deceive you into eating the fake products.

    Why on earth would they not name the products clearly?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:12AM

    by dry (223) on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:12AM (#932283) Journal

    Perhaps you could get a time machine, go back to the 1300's and make sure milk only means mammal secretions and then go back further and make sure that meat means an animal product. These words had been around a long time before the marketers limited their meaning.