France has drafted a new decree to ban certain labels on plant-based meat alternative products after its initial policy was dismissed in June 2022.
The new decree, which has taken into account observations made by the Council of State after suspending previous implementation, specifies the list of banned terms, including ‘steak, ‘ham’, ‘spare ribs’ and ‘escalope’.
The draft was notified to the European Commission on 23rd August 2023, with the draft text specifying that the policy will come into force three months after its publication in order to give operators time to adapt their labelling.
Maintaining consumer trust
Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Marc Fesneau, said: “This new draft decree reflects our desire to put an end to misleading claims as provided for by law, by using names relating to meat products for foodstuffs that do not contain them. It is an issue of transparency and loyalty which meets a legitimate expectation of consumers and producers.
“To maintain the bond of trust with consumers, labelling and its intelligibility are essential. This is the objective of this decree and of all Government policy in this area.”
Businesses will be given the opportunity to sell any products manufactured or labelled before the entry of the decree until stocks last, or until at least one year from the decree’s publication.
