Let it be: Paul McCartney urges EU to drop ban on veggie ‘burgers’ and ‘sausages’ | Food & drink industry

Paul McCartney has joined calls for the EU to reject efforts to ban the use of terms such as “sausage” and “burger” for vegetarian foods.

The former Beatle joined eight British MPs who told the European Commission that a ban approved by the European Parliament in October would solve a non-existent problem and slow progress towards climate targets.

The new rules will end the use of terms such as steak, burger, sausage or schnitzel when referring to products made from vegetables or plant-based proteins. Suggested alternatives include the less appetizing “discs” or “tubes”.

McCartney said: “Requiring burgers and sausages to be ‘plant-based’, ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ should be enough for sensible people to understand what they are eating. It also encourages attitudes that are essential for our health and the health of the planet.”

The musician is one of the world’s most prominent advocates of a vegetarian diet. He and his late wife founded the plant-based food brand Linda McCartney in 1991, and he and his daughters Mary and Stella launched the global “Meatless Monday” campaign to encourage people to eat less meat.

Linda McCartney sausages and burgers have been part of a growing trend of global interest in meat substitutes, even though investment has waned since the bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.

But with the growth of plant-based products has come a backlash, particularly from the politically powerful agriculture and meat distribution industries concerned about the potential impacts of lower demand on employment.

The European Parliament voted 355-247 to ban the use of “meat-related” names on plant-based products. According to Euronews, Céline Imart, a French member of the centre-right European People’s Party and an advocate of the ban, told parliament: “I accept that steaks, chops or sausages are products from our livestock farms. Full stop. No laboratory substitutes, no plant-based products.”

The letter signed by the McCartney family and British MPs argues that EU rules may force the UK to change, because markets and regulations are still intertwined despite the UK leaving the EU.

The EU has a long-standing “geographical indication” system that prevents businesses from buying and selling the names of products associated with particular places, such as champagne (northeastern France), Kalamata olives (southern Greece) or Parma ham (northern Italy). But the attempt to limit the use of general terms is more controversial.

Many of the terms to be banned have malleable meanings. For example, the Collins dictionary defines sausage primarily as relating to meat and secondly as “a sausage-shaped object.” Even more problematic for the ban is that the primary definition of “burger” is “a flat round mass of ground meat or vegetables.”

The eight MPs who signed the letter include former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Green party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.