EU comes up with reserve words for non-vegetarian food: Why ditch the red and green dots?
It would be simpler to popularise symbols for vegetarian food and meat.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
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The vote later this week in the European Parliament on an amendment to ensure words such as ‘hamburger’ or ‘sausage’ exclusively refer to non-vegetarian products on labels appears to be a shot across the bows for the ‘eat shoots and leaves’ lobby.
This presupposes, of course, that meat-eating European customers are fundamentally incapable of discerning that items labelled ‘veggie burger’ or ‘vegan sausage’ contain no animal flesh and they are, therefore, prone to be hoodwinked into eating something that violates their dietary beliefs. They will only be adequately forewarned, it seems, if ‘burger’ is replaced by ‘disc’ and if non-meat sausages are called tubes.
Describing the latter even as ‘fingers’ could probably prove confounding for those ingenuous Europeans. It can be said with some degree of certainty, however, that Indian consumers are smarter than their European counterparts as no one in India will think an aloo tikki burger has even a smidgen of mystery meat.
As an amendment to prevent non-dairy produce from being labelled ‘creamy’ or ‘yoghurt-style’ is also to be voted on, a pushback is in progress there against vegetarianismby-stealth. But rather than reserve words for meat products, it would be simpler to popularise those easy-to-understand symbols for vegetarian food and meat: red and green dots.
This presupposes, of course, that meat-eating European customers are fundamentally incapable of discerning that items labelled ‘veggie burger’ or ‘vegan sausage’ contain no animal flesh and they are, therefore, prone to be hoodwinked into eating something that violates their dietary beliefs. They will only be adequately forewarned, it seems, if ‘burger’ is replaced by ‘disc’ and if non-meat sausages are called tubes.
Describing the latter even as ‘fingers’ could probably prove confounding for those ingenuous Europeans. It can be said with some degree of certainty, however, that Indian consumers are smarter than their European counterparts as no one in India will think an aloo tikki burger has even a smidgen of mystery meat.
As an amendment to prevent non-dairy produce from being labelled ‘creamy’ or ‘yoghurt-style’ is also to be voted on, a pushback is in progress there against vegetarianismby-stealth. But rather than reserve words for meat products, it would be simpler to popularise those easy-to-understand symbols for vegetarian food and meat: red and green dots.
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