EU lawmakers vote to ban labels like steak or meat on vegetarian products

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Lawmakers in the European Parliament on Wednesday voted to ban the labelling of vegetarian protein with terms such as “steak” or “meat.”

The lawmakers voted 532 to 78 to define meat as “edible parts of animals” and to curtail the use of words like steak, escalope, sausage or burger for animal and not plant-based products. The proposal will go to a parliamentary committee to be clarified, before going back to the EU executive arm and then to the bloc's 27 member states for further negotiations.

Céline Imart, a conservative German lawmaker and former farmer, said using meat-related terms for vegetarian products was misleading.

“Now, we’re not talking about banning vegetable or plant-based alternatives, of course not. But I think that terms should speak for themselves and should mean what they mean,” she said in a parliamentary debate on Tuesday.

Her colleague, Austrian MEP Anna Stürgkh from the liberal NEOS party, said consumers are not easily fooled by food labels on non-meat products.

“A beef tomato doesn’t contain any beef ... Ladies’ fingers are not made of actual ladies’ fingers,” she said. “Let’s trust consumers and stop this hot dog populism.”