Although the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Friday (4 October) that a French decree prohibiting the use of terms like ‘steak’ or ‘filet’ plant-based products breaches EU law, its reasoning opens the door to similar bans at national level by other means.
The Luxembourg-based EU court has dealt a blow to a 2021 French law banning the marketing of plant-based foods with names commonly associated with animal-derived products.
The ruling, however, paves the way for Paris – and eventually other member states – to achieve the goal of preventing the marketing of products such as “veggie steaks” by other means.
The French decree was first challenged at a national level by vegetarian and vegan campaigners, and the plant-based food manufacturer Beyond Meat, and was suspended by the country’s highest administrative court pending the ECJ ruling.
According to Friday’s ruling, simply banning “meaty” names for certain foods is not the same as establishing a “legal name” for animal products, which the court said national governments are allowed to do.
The court said that since France had not adopted a legal name for the terms traditionally associated with animal-based foods, it could not prevent manufacturers of plant-based alternatives from using them.
“EU law does not provide for a rule reserving for foodstuffs defined as being of animal origin, the use of legal names containing terms from the butchery, delicatessen and fishmongery sectors (…) the same appears to be true in French law,” the ruling said.
In its conclusion, the ECJ does not rule out the possibility of member states taking measures to establish legal names and clarify what a “steak” or “filet” is, which could open the door for governments to eventually restrict “meaty” terms to products with a particular composition.
The European Vegetarian Union (EVU), one of the organisations that brought up the case in France, acknowledged this possibility in a press release highlighting the potential negative impact of such moves.
“Implementing legal names to (…) animal-based foodstuffs would (…) prove to be a lengthy, complicated and protracted process that risks spiralling into further EU-level harmonisation issues,” the press release said.
According to the EVU, attempts to legally define such products could disrupt the single market due to “cultural and linguistic differences”.
“A sausage in Germany might differ from one in France,” it added.
Concerns about potential market fragmentation were echoed by Paolo Patruno, deputy secretary-general of the Meat Processing Industry in the EU (CLITRAVI), who called on the bloc’s lawmakers to step in.
“In 2021 we called for common rules for the EU, but some members of the European Parliament preferred to make their decision based on ideology instead of law,” he said.
At the time, the issue was discussed during a debate on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in which the Parliament rejected all amendments proposing to ban the use of meat denominations for plant-based foodstuffs.
Given that regulating the marketing of plant-based products has been high on the French government’s agenda in recent years, it remains to be seen whether Paris will make another move in this direction.
In February this year, amid a wave of farmer protests across the bloc, the government adopted a similar decree as part of a “sovereignty plan” for the livestock sector.
In the meantime, the ECJ’s ruling means that food companies in France cannot be prosecuted for using “meaty” terms, and “veggie steaks” can continue to be sold on supermarket shelves across the country.
But the row goes far beyond French borders, with Italy introducing – but never enforcing – a similar ban last year.
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