May 6, 2018 by Chris

Franco Follies

Are modern consumers so unthinking as to believe that a product clearly labeled “vegan cheese” contains milk product? Or that a package of “vegetarian sausage” contains ground meat?

Emphatically, no. They are not.

Omnivores are not accidentally purchasing vegan products en masse. Vegans and vegetarians are not rallying against products being named after the very foods they are attempting to mirror in taste, appearance, and texture. The simple truth remains: these labels do no harm.

But that is not the position of a French Parliament that recently voted to prohibit the use of “meat or dairy terms to describe substitute products,” including those made with “soya, vegan, or vegetarian products.” The cost of non-compliance? Fines up to 300,000 Euro according to KamCity. And the logic? The law will help “better inform” customers, says the bill’s chief proponent, MP Jean-Baptiste Moreau.

In any other context it would be an irredeemable sin for a French politician to say that the French don’t know their meats and cheese. Here, of course, too many French voters make their livelihoods on these traditional foods to care. What is a bruised ego when you can harness the apparatus of the state to lay low your competition?

France, sadly, is not alone. Missouri is in the process of enacting similar legislation, as is Russia. Other jurisdictions are bound to follow. As sure as the sun will rise, still more politicians will kowtow to industry pressures.