<p>A vegan sausage by any other name would smell as sweet. Yet France has recently amended its agriculture bill to ban the use of so-called “meat and dairy terms” to describe vegetable-based products that serve as meat substitutes. These include patties made from soya and dairy alternatives made from oats, coconuts, almonds, cashews, and hazelnuts.</p>
<p>The words in question include “sausage”, “steak”, “burger”, “milk”, and “cheese”. The use of these to describe vegan products will now attract fines of up to 300,000 Euros. In defence of this new bill, the French politician and farmer Jean Baptiste Moreau tweeted that “it is important to combat false claims. Our products must be designated correctly”. Moreau is completely right to highlight the importance of combatting false claims. But the false claims are his own.</p>
<p>All uses of the expressions targeted by the new bill are perfectly meaningful and informative. Moreau would have us believe that there is no such thing as non-dairy milk, or that sausages contain animal flesh by definition. These false claims must be combatted. To give just one example, expressions such as “coconut milk” and “coconut cream” have been in circulation from long before plant-based diets became fashionable. While meat and dairy for now remain the <em>paradigm</em> cases for milk, butter, steak, and sausages, they are not the only ones. Indeed, the paradigms are already shifting.</p>
<p>Language evolves naturally alongside our behavioural practices. The rise of new uses and meanings of words cannot be stopped through legislation, and it is wrong to try to do so. If one really wants to remain stuck in the past it is worth remembering that the English word “sausage” and the French “saucisse” are both derived from the Latin “salsus” meaning salted. Perhaps Moreau would also like to ban unsalted sausages?</p>
<p>The real motive behind Moreau’s rhetoric has nothing to do with the correct designation of agricultural products. The motive is plain old fear. From museology to agriculture, fear lies behind most attempts to conserve the status quo in the face of progress. Many farmers are at war with veganism because they see it as a threat to their way of life and fear social and financial losses. It is because of this that Michael Gove, the UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, recently made the equally false claim that “meat is crucial to a balanced diet”. Gove was addressing farmers and clearly wanted to reassure them that he was on their side. But false claims about nutrition can only do damage in the long run, whatever the financial benefits are perceived to be.</p>
<p>Neither linguistic nor nutritional facts are on the side of the radical pro-meat lobby. Gove was either highly misinformed or lying when he said that “for health reasons there’s an appropriate level of meat in anyone’s diet which doctors and nutritionists would advise us to consume” … fresh dairy produce, fish, and meat are “critical to human health and flourishing”. In the aftermath, a high number of doctors signed a letter to Gove stating that a growing number of health professionals advocate a predominantly plant-based diet for optimal health. Their detailed statement demonstrates that not only is Gove either highly misinformed or lying but that a diet high in animal produce is the leading cause of numerous diet-related diseases, which could be easily prevented via a plant-based diet of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains.</p>
<p>Gove asserts that he wants farmers to play a critical role in improving public health. But they can do so much better than that. Farmers can lead the way into a future that is better not only for our own health but also that of the environment and the poor animals who live in torturous conditions. Farmers should be given subsidies to develop and transition to innovative farming practices that are more sustainable environmentally and better for humans, other animals, and the environment as a whole. For this to happen our politicians must stop using false rhetoric trying to bully vegans with silly bans and fear-mongering.</p>
<p>When Barbara Hendricks, Germany’s environment minister, announced that all catering at official functions of the Ministry of the Environment would now be vegetarian and climate-friendly, the German minister for agriculture responded that he believes “in diversity and freedom of choice, not nanny-statism and idealism”, adding that meat and fish are “part of a balanced diet”. But the real nanny state is that which uses a rhetoric of misinformation to ban perfectly legitimate vocabulary. Whatever your view on the ethics of meat and dairy consumption, it is incredibly irresponsible to defend it on linguistic and scientific falsehoods. No such thing as a vegan steak tartar? There must be some mis-steak.</p>
