You Mad Bro? Meat, Dairy Groups Want Veg Foods Called Something Else
The number of people going vegan has exploded in recent years, which has the meat and dairy industries stooping to new lows out of fear of an inevitable future when they’ll no longer exist.
Meat and dairy lobbyists are now targeting vegan companies with petty legal complaints about animal-free products being labeled as “meat,” “cheese,” or “milk.”
Blue Heron Creamery, a small vegan company located in Vancouver, Canada, was notified by authorities that it could no longer use the word “cheese” to label its products. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency gave the company the news after receiving a complaint about “products being labelled as ‘cheese’ when they are allegedly not.”
Thankfully, the laughable complaint failed to make much of a stink. Blue Heron announced on its Instagram account that it “received confirmation that [the] 100% dairy free, plant-based cheeses can be identified exactly that way.”
Here in the States, we’ve seen the desperate dairy industry—which is experiencing nosediving sales—try the same lame semantics excuse. Dairy farmers claim that plant-derived milks should be called (hold your laughter) “nut juice” or “beverage,” as if changing the labeling on vegan products would save their own crumbling businesses.
In Arizona and Arkansas, the meat industry has pushed lawmakers to introduce new bills that would make it illegal for plant-derived meats to be labeled as such. In fact, the passage of similar laws is being attempted in over a dozen states.
Just last year, the panicked U.S. Cattlemen’s Association petitioned the federal government to bar companies that produce cell-based meat from calling their foods “meat” or “beef”—even though that’s precisely what they are. “Cell-based,” “cultured,” or “clean” meat is animal muscle tissue grown in a clean food-production facility. It is meat, and no animal torture or bloody slaughterhouse is required.
The meat and dairy industries are the saltiest haters in the grocery business.
What these animal abusers fail to realize is that a name change won’t hide the fact that a growing consumer base wants to eat truly nutritious meats, milks, and cheeses that come from soybeans, almonds, oats, and other healthy plant sources—not dead animals or their secretions. More than ever, people are shunning foods that require still-conscious animals’ throats to be slit and babies to be torn away from their mothers.
Fortified vegan milks are delicious and contain all the calcium, protein, and vitamin D of dairy but none of the cholesterol, hormones, or cruelty found in cow’s milk. Processed meats from animals have been linked to a slew of health issues, while vegans have lower rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. A name change won’t change these scientific facts.
It’s obvious that the meat and dairy industries are running scared and trying every trick in the book to protect their cruel, dying businesses. But by resorting to such childish complaints, they’re showing that they and PETA agree on one thing: The vegan revolution is here. So they can either get on board or be left in the dust.
