The House of Lords will tomorrow morning quiz experts about the EU’s proposal to ban words associated with meat to describe vegetarian food. The EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, chaired by former Lib Dem MEP Lord Teverson, will discuss whether the ban would be “in the interest of consumers.” The proposal would forbid the words “steak”, “sausage”, “escalope”, “burger”, or “hamburger” from being used to advertise non-meat products…

Guido is not generally a fan of meat substitutes, however this seems to be another example of over-regulation by the EU, if producers want to call bean patties “bean burgers”, so be it. No harm in it, unless you are a French farmer…

The Vegan Society, which will give evidence to the committee on the issue hit out at the EU proposal saying is “has little to do with consumer protection and instead is motivated by economic concerns of the meat industry. Trying to ban widely-used, conventional phrases describing vegan products is anti-competitive and unfair, whilst there is no evidence that consumers find them confusing.” The EU pushing anti-competitive policies to defend big agri-businesses from market competition? Bring on Brexit…