In France, vegetarian substitute products may no longer be marketed as “steak” or “sausage”. “The use of terms traditionally associated with meat and fish to designate non-animal products will no longer be possible,” says a regulation published on Thursday. The rule will come into effect on October 1st.
The meat processing industry had been insisting on such a regulation for a long time. The President of the Federation of French Cattle Breeders and Meat Processors, Jean-François Guilhard, welcomed it as “an essential step in favor of the transparency of information for consumers and the preservation of our products and our know-how”.
Onav, an association of scientists and health experts specializing in meat alternatives, criticized the measure as clearly serving to protect the economic interests of the meat industry. At the same time, in France, it jeopardizes the transition to more sustainable and healthier plant-based alternatives to meat, the production of which is considered extremely harmful to the climate.
The marketing requirement only applies to products made in France. Farmers’ associations therefore called on the government in Paris to work in Brussels for an EU-wide regulation. Based on a decision by the European Court of Justice, a similar regulation already applies across the EU to substitute products for dairy products: with a few exceptions, plant-based yoghurt, milk or cheese may not be marketed as such.
New figures on pension taxation: In 2021, taxes had to be paid on almost 65 percent of all statutory, private or company pensions. That is almost 10 percent more than in 2015.
Chocolate maker Barry Callebaut has found salmonella at a plant in Wieze, Belgium. Production was stopped and delivery interrupted, as the Swiss company announced on Thursday.
Two baggage employees at Düsseldorf Airport gave an online portal an insight into their everyday lives. “Everything is much more extreme than it can be read in the press,” says one of the current situation. And he thinks things are about to get a whole lot worse.
