>Documents chronicle a years-long lobbying effort by the dairy industry to block plant-based alternatives from using terms such as ‘cheese’.
>
>The guidance, which is still in a draft phase, is being prepared to help trading standards officers interpret and enforce laws on how dairy alternatives are described in packaging and marketing.
>
>The draft suggested plant-based products should even be prohibited from saying they are ‘not milk’ – or describing themselves as ‘alternatives’ to dairy products.
>
>The UK is one of the leading consumers of plant-based products in the world, with plant-based drinks seeing sales increase by 24% between 2020 and 2022 to £276 million. It now has a market share of 7%. Nearly half (48%) of UK consumers drink at least one plant-based milk alternative.
>
>Dairy UK, a trade association that describes itself as the “voice of the dairy industry”, has been pushing the government for tougher guidelines for plant-based products since at least 2017.
It’s interesting that they’re advocating that these planet based brands shouldn’t even be allowed to label as an alternative.
I agree things that aren’t cheese or milk shouldn’t be allowed to have confusing packaging that implies they are cheese or milk, but banning them from having clear packaging that describes them as a cheese or milk alternative is crazy.
This is ridiculous, what is the dairy industry scared of? If im picking up vegan cheese then i understand that its not milk based cheese, there is no threat to their industry from misrepresentation.
Using terms like cheese and yogurt lets me know what im buying a mock of, its helpful
Edit: After 4 hours of discussion I have been linked to [The cheese and Cream regulations 1995](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/3240/body/made), these define cheese as essentially not being made out of anything but milk. This would mean that it cannot be called cheese under UK regulations. I personally would like to see this updated to reflect Vegan cheese as above I find it useful and uncontroversial, but I thought it fair to highlight the current state of play. This proposed guidance still goes too far where terms like “cheesy alternative” would be banned making these products very hard to sell
See im in favour of not being allowed to say its not x.
But not being allowed to say its not an alternative to x is just bizarre.
Will they have to rename Milk of Magnesia? The amount of times I’ve accidentally bought it and put it in my brew… None.
You shouldn’t be able to sell oat milk as milk because it’s not milk. It is oat milk and should be sold as oat milk. And that’s what every ersatz food is quite clearly described as on the packaging. No reasonable person would see a carton of oat milk and assume it came from a cow. This is unnecessary regulation: a solution in search of a problem.
I was vegetarian for 12 years and my dad used to rage that I ate Linda McCartney sausages and they weren’t sausages. Years later, I’m a meat eater again but still back the veggie/vegan ways and I have to listen to my boomer colleagues whinge about it.
It’s fucking bizarre… why the hell do people get so hung up on this kind of nonsense then just turn the other cheek and drop the usual platitudes (‘it’s always happened’ and ‘they’re all the same) when there’s literal corruption highlighted to them?!?! My brain hurts.
This will definitely help people who accidentally buy the alternatives instead of buying milk, it’s really hard to tell the difference, identical packaging, price and shares the same shelf space….
They should have proper descriptions on the milk cartons as well, “lacteal secretion of a cows mammary gland, extracted by machine from artificially impregnated cows”.
All food should have similar descriptions. Would make some interesting labels I think.
Its like saying don’t call electric vehicles cars, because its fundamentally different and should be called something else.
The quality of “not cheese” that I have tried so far is so incredibly poor that I would very much like clear labeling.
Ridiculous and desperate. The cow based dairy industry knows there’s a chance it’s going to get pretty decimated over the next decade or two.
This will get more interesting when precision fermented actual dairy protein products hit our shelves…
As someone who isn’t vegan but has a child that’s was allergic to cows milk protein. I was buying vegan alternatives to milk, yoghurt and cheese etc for his diet and there’s absolutely nothing confusing about the packaging. This is total bullshit designed to make things harder for producers of vegan alternatives.
This is a (rightly) declining industry (the dairy industry) trying desperately to stop their inevitable decline as people become more aware of the environmental and ethical issues of dairy and other animal products.
These Capitalist industries don’t actually like the free market, they want to rig it in their favour as much as they can and I guarantee many governments, mainly right wing, will be happy to take their money and oblige them.
That’ll make sense as to why the new ‘Flora Plant Based Butter’ isn’t labelled as butter but b+tter. And they don’t mention butter unless it’s in the context of dairy butter.
The advertising is quite anti-dairy saying ‘skip the cow’ so I wonder if that has got the dairy industry’s back up.
Just another reminder that lobbyists runs this country
never underestimate the creative forces of marketing. if mcdonalds can market themselves as being nutritionally complete, vegan brands can find a way to double-down on marketing cruelty-free nutritionally complete products. creating a new category of products only makes this easier.
More crony capitalism leading to increased regulation, the joys
One of the first vegan cheeses was called Gary..i like that, we could have fermented Gary, juices Gary etc lol
I see this as a positive as it’s clear the dairy industry are worried about it’s future.
I couldn’t care less what the alternatives are called.
Being the “party of the free market” while also overseeing aggressive regulatory capture, nice.
Can we rename sausages to vegetable free carrots, or meat based carrots please?
‘And peanut butter isn’t butter, quince cheese isn’t cheese, cream of coconut isn’t cream…. try as dairy farmers might, history and the nature of language development will decide’ – Stephen Fry’s response to the lazy declaration that oat milk isn’t “real” milk.
you want a real complaint, ice cream companies need to fuck off copying Halo Top with displaying calories full tub worth on the front. because Halo Top do it, but Oppo shows per 100ml so you think its better but its not. the tub is in grams but the calories are in per 100ml, how am i meant to measure 100ml of ice cream?
then you have ben and jerries doing it now except its actually 2 spoons worth. that is misleading marketing.
Does these mean “Utterly Butterly” and “i cant believe its not butter” have to change their names too?
Then they need to remove the milk tag from the skimmed “Milk” That white liquid contains no milk.
Truth in food labelling is important, but if it’s labelled Vegan Milk, or whatever, we all know that it’s not milk but some kind of plant based, part alternative, to it.
They can mandate that all plant-based drinks and beverages be renamed to “Boris Johnson’s pilates-induced anal leakage”, it’s not going to stop me from buying them.
Wow this is exactly what we need to solve the housing crisis and rampant child poverty. Thanks Tories.
They should crack down on vague labelling such as ‘flavourings’ or ‘natural flavourings’ – I know the damn stuff has things in to flavour it, if I’m looking at the ingredients I want to know what they are – and if you make the bugger you know what they are too.
Wait. Cottage cheese isn’t really made from cottages?
Riiiight and yet coconut milk has been a thing for literally decades and decades without issue.
Also coconut ‘water’ isn’t actually water too
I decided to go pescatarian this month with my sister as a challenge. We’ve had no issues finding good and tasty alternatives.
Side note: Try the richmond meat free sausages, you get a frozen pack of 30 for £4.20 from Costco.
Yes, because I get so sad when I buy oat milk thinking it comes from a cow. Oh wait…no, the packaging is clear and I think dairy milk tastes disgusting.
This is ridiculous.
“…new measures could see that treatment extended to cheese and yoghurt, even if prefaced by ‘vegan’ or ‘plant-based’. Under the draft guidance, brands would be banned from using descriptors such as ‘yoghurt-style’ or ‘cheddar-type’, or homophones or misspellings such as ‘mylk’.
The draft suggested plant-based products should even be prohibited from saying they are ‘not milk’ – or describing themselves as ‘alternatives’ to dairy products.”
Well what in the flying fuck are you supposed to call them then
Cathedral City advert for their plant based offering: “dairy free alternative to cheese”
Also Cathedral City:”we can call it cheese and reference dairy but companies who only produce plant based aren’t allowed to”
“Don’t want to confuse consumers that those products are of nutritional equivalence”
Cheeky bastards. Dairy isn’t all that and besides they’re all fortified. What’s next? Ban fruit and veg for muscling in on dairy’s vitamin and mineral territory?
What do you call the juice stored inside a coconut? Coconut milk right? I don’t remember the dairy industry going mad about that and it’s been called that for centuries.
The same way that American cheese is marked American so you know it’s not really cheese, as long as it says Vegan on the label before the Cheese part there should be no issue.
How daft are the industry and the politicians pandering to them? Everyone, literally everyone, calls alternatives “cheese”, “milk”, etc. A law won’t stop that.
“crack down” making it sound like it’s something bad that’s gotten out of control 😂
what gets me is when I see something advertised as “100% Plant Based” and then discover it contains mushrooms (which I can’t eat and aren’t a plant). Big Mushroom lobby still trying to normalise them as plants.
I’m not vegan and I love dairy, but this is anti-competitive. If people want an alternative to your (dairy) product, make your (dairy) product better; don’t lobby to make it harder for consumers to find a (non-dairy) alternative.
I think if they want to go with technical descriptions they should call meat sausages ground up pigs in a skin shaped like a tube, with a picture of the pig it came from on the packet.
And cheese, the fermented secretions of a r*ped mother cow.
Even if you have some irrational, seething hatred for veganism, everyone should oppose this out of principle. Corporations shouldn’t have this much power over law, and yet they do.
I’m sick of this dumb cunt country that can’t fucking read, why even have packaging with colours and words and ‘traffic lights’ and shit on it if people don’t pick it up and actually understand what they are buying
“it said cheese” … like how are you that dense, did you not know what any of the other words anywhere else on the package meant?
If you can be ‘mislead’ by something so simple, why on earth you’re allowed to vote
Some heavy lobbying from milk and dairy industries here for sure. People aren’t stupid enough to get confused by these products; they just want to make them harder to find.
Thank god this is coming. I only hope they correct the naming of Easter eggs, pigs in blankets, toad in the hole, *spotted dick*, Welsh rarebit, blood oranges, ginger nuts and chicken fingers.
Big dairy want to make it harder to find alternatives. Since the “can’t call it milk” bullshit, it’s harder to search grocery apps.
“No results for soya milk. Soya drink? Soya reduction? Pressed, hulled soya in water? White fluid of soya origin? Oh fuck it, I’ll just drink some cow secretions like the good calf I am.”
It’s a complete bad faith argument to say it’s to prevent confusion. Only messhead Gary from the flats gets confused by Oat Milk and messhead Gary gets confused by which end of the car key to use.
48 comments
>Documents chronicle a years-long lobbying effort by the dairy industry to block plant-based alternatives from using terms such as ‘cheese’.
>
>The guidance, which is still in a draft phase, is being prepared to help trading standards officers interpret and enforce laws on how dairy alternatives are described in packaging and marketing.
>
>The draft suggested plant-based products should even be prohibited from saying they are ‘not milk’ – or describing themselves as ‘alternatives’ to dairy products.
>
>The UK is one of the leading consumers of plant-based products in the world, with plant-based drinks seeing sales increase by 24% between 2020 and 2022 to £276 million. It now has a market share of 7%. Nearly half (48%) of UK consumers drink at least one plant-based milk alternative.
>
>Dairy UK, a trade association that describes itself as the “voice of the dairy industry”, has been pushing the government for tougher guidelines for plant-based products since at least 2017.
It’s interesting that they’re advocating that these planet based brands shouldn’t even be allowed to label as an alternative.
I agree things that aren’t cheese or milk shouldn’t be allowed to have confusing packaging that implies they are cheese or milk, but banning them from having clear packaging that describes them as a cheese or milk alternative is crazy.
This is ridiculous, what is the dairy industry scared of? If im picking up vegan cheese then i understand that its not milk based cheese, there is no threat to their industry from misrepresentation.
Using terms like cheese and yogurt lets me know what im buying a mock of, its helpful
Edit: After 4 hours of discussion I have been linked to [The cheese and Cream regulations 1995](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/3240/body/made), these define cheese as essentially not being made out of anything but milk. This would mean that it cannot be called cheese under UK regulations. I personally would like to see this updated to reflect Vegan cheese as above I find it useful and uncontroversial, but I thought it fair to highlight the current state of play. This proposed guidance still goes too far where terms like “cheesy alternative” would be banned making these products very hard to sell
See im in favour of not being allowed to say its not x.
But not being allowed to say its not an alternative to x is just bizarre.
Will they have to rename Milk of Magnesia? The amount of times I’ve accidentally bought it and put it in my brew… None.
You shouldn’t be able to sell oat milk as milk because it’s not milk. It is oat milk and should be sold as oat milk. And that’s what every ersatz food is quite clearly described as on the packaging. No reasonable person would see a carton of oat milk and assume it came from a cow. This is unnecessary regulation: a solution in search of a problem.
I was vegetarian for 12 years and my dad used to rage that I ate Linda McCartney sausages and they weren’t sausages. Years later, I’m a meat eater again but still back the veggie/vegan ways and I have to listen to my boomer colleagues whinge about it.
It’s fucking bizarre… why the hell do people get so hung up on this kind of nonsense then just turn the other cheek and drop the usual platitudes (‘it’s always happened’ and ‘they’re all the same) when there’s literal corruption highlighted to them?!?! My brain hurts.
This will definitely help people who accidentally buy the alternatives instead of buying milk, it’s really hard to tell the difference, identical packaging, price and shares the same shelf space….
They should have proper descriptions on the milk cartons as well, “lacteal secretion of a cows mammary gland, extracted by machine from artificially impregnated cows”.
All food should have similar descriptions. Would make some interesting labels I think.
Its like saying don’t call electric vehicles cars, because its fundamentally different and should be called something else.
The quality of “not cheese” that I have tried so far is so incredibly poor that I would very much like clear labeling.
Ridiculous and desperate. The cow based dairy industry knows there’s a chance it’s going to get pretty decimated over the next decade or two.
This will get more interesting when precision fermented actual dairy protein products hit our shelves…
As someone who isn’t vegan but has a child that’s was allergic to cows milk protein. I was buying vegan alternatives to milk, yoghurt and cheese etc for his diet and there’s absolutely nothing confusing about the packaging. This is total bullshit designed to make things harder for producers of vegan alternatives.
This is a (rightly) declining industry (the dairy industry) trying desperately to stop their inevitable decline as people become more aware of the environmental and ethical issues of dairy and other animal products.
These Capitalist industries don’t actually like the free market, they want to rig it in their favour as much as they can and I guarantee many governments, mainly right wing, will be happy to take their money and oblige them.
That’ll make sense as to why the new ‘Flora Plant Based Butter’ isn’t labelled as butter but b+tter. And they don’t mention butter unless it’s in the context of dairy butter.
https://www.flora.com/en-gb/floraplant/our-products/flora-plant-salted
The advertising is quite anti-dairy saying ‘skip the cow’ so I wonder if that has got the dairy industry’s back up.
Just another reminder that lobbyists runs this country
never underestimate the creative forces of marketing. if mcdonalds can market themselves as being nutritionally complete, vegan brands can find a way to double-down on marketing cruelty-free nutritionally complete products. creating a new category of products only makes this easier.
More crony capitalism leading to increased regulation, the joys
One of the first vegan cheeses was called Gary..i like that, we could have fermented Gary, juices Gary etc lol
I see this as a positive as it’s clear the dairy industry are worried about it’s future.
I couldn’t care less what the alternatives are called.
Being the “party of the free market” while also overseeing aggressive regulatory capture, nice.
Can we rename sausages to vegetable free carrots, or meat based carrots please?
‘And peanut butter isn’t butter, quince cheese isn’t cheese, cream of coconut isn’t cream…. try as dairy farmers might, history and the nature of language development will decide’ – Stephen Fry’s response to the lazy declaration that oat milk isn’t “real” milk.
you want a real complaint, ice cream companies need to fuck off copying Halo Top with displaying calories full tub worth on the front. because Halo Top do it, but Oppo shows per 100ml so you think its better but its not. the tub is in grams but the calories are in per 100ml, how am i meant to measure 100ml of ice cream?
then you have ben and jerries doing it now except its actually 2 spoons worth. that is misleading marketing.
Does these mean “Utterly Butterly” and “i cant believe its not butter” have to change their names too?
Then they need to remove the milk tag from the skimmed “Milk” That white liquid contains no milk.
Truth in food labelling is important, but if it’s labelled Vegan Milk, or whatever, we all know that it’s not milk but some kind of plant based, part alternative, to it.
They can mandate that all plant-based drinks and beverages be renamed to “Boris Johnson’s pilates-induced anal leakage”, it’s not going to stop me from buying them.
Wow this is exactly what we need to solve the housing crisis and rampant child poverty. Thanks Tories.
They should crack down on vague labelling such as ‘flavourings’ or ‘natural flavourings’ – I know the damn stuff has things in to flavour it, if I’m looking at the ingredients I want to know what they are – and if you make the bugger you know what they are too.
Wait. Cottage cheese isn’t really made from cottages?
Riiiight and yet coconut milk has been a thing for literally decades and decades without issue.
Also coconut ‘water’ isn’t actually water too
I decided to go pescatarian this month with my sister as a challenge. We’ve had no issues finding good and tasty alternatives.
Side note: Try the richmond meat free sausages, you get a frozen pack of 30 for £4.20 from Costco.
Yes, because I get so sad when I buy oat milk thinking it comes from a cow. Oh wait…no, the packaging is clear and I think dairy milk tastes disgusting.
This is ridiculous.
“…new measures could see that treatment extended to cheese and yoghurt, even if prefaced by ‘vegan’ or ‘plant-based’. Under the draft guidance, brands would be banned from using descriptors such as ‘yoghurt-style’ or ‘cheddar-type’, or homophones or misspellings such as ‘mylk’.
The draft suggested plant-based products should even be prohibited from saying they are ‘not milk’ – or describing themselves as ‘alternatives’ to dairy products.”
Well what in the flying fuck are you supposed to call them then
Cathedral City advert for their plant based offering: “dairy free alternative to cheese”
Also Cathedral City:”we can call it cheese and reference dairy but companies who only produce plant based aren’t allowed to”
“Don’t want to confuse consumers that those products are of nutritional equivalence”
Cheeky bastards. Dairy isn’t all that and besides they’re all fortified. What’s next? Ban fruit and veg for muscling in on dairy’s vitamin and mineral territory?
What do you call the juice stored inside a coconut? Coconut milk right? I don’t remember the dairy industry going mad about that and it’s been called that for centuries.
The same way that American cheese is marked American so you know it’s not really cheese, as long as it says Vegan on the label before the Cheese part there should be no issue.
How daft are the industry and the politicians pandering to them? Everyone, literally everyone, calls alternatives “cheese”, “milk”, etc. A law won’t stop that.
“crack down” making it sound like it’s something bad that’s gotten out of control 😂
what gets me is when I see something advertised as “100% Plant Based” and then discover it contains mushrooms (which I can’t eat and aren’t a plant). Big Mushroom lobby still trying to normalise them as plants.
I’m not vegan and I love dairy, but this is anti-competitive. If people want an alternative to your (dairy) product, make your (dairy) product better; don’t lobby to make it harder for consumers to find a (non-dairy) alternative.
I think if they want to go with technical descriptions they should call meat sausages ground up pigs in a skin shaped like a tube, with a picture of the pig it came from on the packet.
And cheese, the fermented secretions of a r*ped mother cow.
Even if you have some irrational, seething hatred for veganism, everyone should oppose this out of principle. Corporations shouldn’t have this much power over law, and yet they do.
I’m sick of this dumb cunt country that can’t fucking read, why even have packaging with colours and words and ‘traffic lights’ and shit on it if people don’t pick it up and actually understand what they are buying
“it said cheese” … like how are you that dense, did you not know what any of the other words anywhere else on the package meant?
If you can be ‘mislead’ by something so simple, why on earth you’re allowed to vote
Some heavy lobbying from milk and dairy industries here for sure. People aren’t stupid enough to get confused by these products; they just want to make them harder to find.
Thank god this is coming. I only hope they correct the naming of Easter eggs, pigs in blankets, toad in the hole, *spotted dick*, Welsh rarebit, blood oranges, ginger nuts and chicken fingers.
Big dairy want to make it harder to find alternatives. Since the “can’t call it milk” bullshit, it’s harder to search grocery apps.
“No results for soya milk. Soya drink? Soya reduction? Pressed, hulled soya in water? White fluid of soya origin? Oh fuck it, I’ll just drink some cow secretions like the good calf I am.”
It’s a complete bad faith argument to say it’s to prevent confusion. Only messhead Gary from the flats gets confused by Oat Milk and messhead Gary gets confused by which end of the car key to use.
Don’t pander to messhead Gary.