A law voted in 2020 provides for the use of the word “steak” for vegetable protein products from this fall.
Le Monde with AFP
First setback for meat industries. The Council of State validated the request of an association which required the suspension of a decree prohibiting, from 1 er October, the use of the appellations “steak”, “lardon”, “Saucisse”, “Boulette” or “Carpaccio” for vegetable protein products.
The decision, consulted on Wednesday July 27 by the France-Presse agency, is a decision-making decision: the highest administrative court has not spoken on the merits of the case, but it recognizes the urgency of Recourse of the Proteins France association, at the origin of the request.
a stay of “auspicious” for the association
This association, which defends the manufacturers of vegetable proteins, had filed a request for interim measures, estimating, during the audience which was held in the previous Friday, that the entry into force of the decree at 1 Er October 2022 would not leave enough time to the players in the sector to reorganize their activity, at the risk of sowing confusion among consumers and losing market share.
The Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Frauds (DGCCRF), for its part, had challenged the urgency to be suspended, considering that the promulgation of the law in 2020 had left enough time industrialists to make their arrangements before the application decree of June 29.
The organization is delighted with this stay “auspicious”, but remains “cautious” pending a decision of the highest administrative jurisdiction on the merits, said the lawyer for the association, Guillaume Hannotin. “The Council of State has retained our means drawn from the impossibility for vegetable food to get out of the lexical field which approaches closely or far from meat,” he said. Besides, according to him, some appellations have originally not relation to meat, like “steak”, which means “slice” in English, or even “carpaccio”, named after the Italian painter who made the red prevail In his paintings, recalls the lawyer.
“We will have to call our bacon” small plant pink bits “?”
The plant protein sector has long hoped that France would make “reverse”, especially since the European Union, which authorizes this type of name, had expressed its disapproval in the face of the French decision.
In October 2020, the European Parliament had indeed rejected a large majority a text aimed at prohibiting the use of terms of animal origin for plant products – except for the names “yogurt”, “cream” or “Cheese” applied to animal milk products. With the publication of this decree at the end of June, France had become the only country in the European Union to go backwards this decision.
The DGCCRF had invited manufacturers of similarities to “develop their own terminology”, believing that the products concerned did not meet, despite the use, the criteria for being called “steak” or “nuggets”. “We will have to call our bacon” small plant pink bits “? It will be complicated”, had quipped Nicolas Schweitzer, founder of the French start-up La Vie, who underlined the paradox of this decree with the displayed ambition of the government to strengthen the plant protein sector.
Proteins France, for its part, denounced a “fragmentation of the market”, the products “legally manufactured or marketed in another Member State of the European Union or in Turkey” which can keep their name “Saucisse” or “Broocette” On French shelves.