Products underived from animals can no longer be labeled as meat
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Missouri lawmakers approved changes that will better protect the state’s livestock industry.
Provisions in Senate Bill 627 define meat as “any edible portion of livestock or poultry carcass or part thereof.”
This prohibits food companies from marketing any imitation products as meat.
These changes will help eliminate customer confusion and protect livestock producers, said Mike Deering, executive vice president of the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association.
“It helps to promote marketing with integrity,” he told Farms.com today. “It also helps to prevent the weakening of products that our farmers work hard to produce. If someone gets sick from a product labeled as beef that actually isn’t beef and there’s a recall on that product, it’s the farmers who will feel the impact of the recall the most.”
The bill is not, however, an attack on technology.
Producers understand that technology is an important part of modern agriculture, but it needs to have different rules than on-farm production, Deering said.
“We have nothing against technology or even plant-based products, but they need to stand on their own two legs and they need to be honest with consumers,” he said.
The bill will now head to Governor Greintens’s desk.
If it is signed into law, Missouri would be the first state in the U.S. to address the issue.
But they’re taking cues from a European country.
French legislators passed similar regulations in April.
Food companies can’t use words like “steak,” “sausage” or similar terms to describe products that aren’t derived from livestock.
Violating the law in France could lead to fines of US$350,000.
"It is important to combat false claims. Our products must be designated correctly: the terms of #cheese or #steak will be reserved for products of animal origin," French MP and farmer Jean-Baptiste Moreau tweeted on Apr. 19, BBC reported.