If Meat and Dairy Weren’t So Fragile, They’d Compete—Not Censor

The meat, dairy, and egg industries aren't trying to protect consumers (as they claim); they’re trying to protect their profits.

When plant-based foods win over consumers, meat and dairy industries don’t compete—they censor. From “vegan burger” bans to “almond milk” crackdowns, language has become the new battleground.

Photo credit Mae Mu

Remember when France banned terms like “vegan bacon” and “vegetarian sausage” on plant-based food packaging?

Or when Dutch authorities told The Vegetarian Butcher—a company founded by a ninth-generation farmer who wants to be “the biggest butcher in the world without ever slaughtering an animal”—to rename its products because they might “confuse consumers”?

Or that case in Germany, dubbed “Schnitzelgate” by the media, where officials declared that terms like schnitzel and wurst should be reserved exclusively for animal-based products.

And of course, there’s the U.S. dairy industry, which has spent decades seeking to ban the use of terms like milk, butter, and yogurt for products not made from cow’s milk.

While France’s labeling ban was overturned in 2025 and similar efforts at the federal level in the U.S. have stalled, states like Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas have passed their own restrictive labeling laws—many of which are now being challenged in court. Around the world, attempts to censor plant-based labels continue to gain traction.

The push to ban terms like “meat” and “milk” from plant-based packaging only underscores how threatened industries and governments feel by the growing success of these non-animal alternatives. Instead of adapting to changing consumer demand, they’re trying to suppress it. (Spoiler: it won’t work.)

Words Change. Eating Habits Do Too.

Words evolve. Meanings shift. Context matters. And consumers aren’t stupid. They know exactly what they’re buying—and they’re often choosing plant-based precisely because it’s animal-free. No one is confused by a “veggie burger,” and no one is being duped when they buy almond milk or cashew cheese.

In fact, familiar terms help set expectations for taste, texture, and function—milk is expected to be creamy and pourable; burgers are patties on a bun with toppings; cheese implies richness, fat, and a particular melt or mouthfeel.

What’s more, many of these words weren’t originally about animals at all.

• Schnitzel comes from a root meaning “to cut or slice.”

• Wurst means “to mix up.”

• Sausage comes from the Latin for “salted.”

• Meat in Old English simply meant “food” (as in sweetmeats, coconut meat, or the meat of a nut).

• The same is true in French: viande, whose meaning is now narrowed to mean “animal flesh / meat,” also once meant “food” in general. Its root, vivere, means “to live.” How ironic that today it describes the dismembered body of a dead animal.

Language is not simply a means of communication. It reflects and reinforces the values of our culture. It shapes how we think, how we speak, and how we act. And it often masks, justifies, or dulls our ethical red flags.

Who’s Really Misleading Consumers?

In fact, it’s the meat, dairy, and egg industries whose language arguably misleads consumers the most. The euphemisms they use to market their products obscure the violence inherent in bringing animals into this world only to kill them. Even common terms like pork, bacon, poultry, beef, burger, and steak conceal the reality that they are the dismembered bodies of once-living beings.

Instead of banning qualifiers like veggie, vegetarian, plant-based, or vegan, perhaps it’s the animal-based products that should be labeled more honestly—with qualifiers like pig, piglet, sow, cow, calf, steer, bird, or simply animal. (Piglet patty, anyone?)

“Cashew milk” could then compete fairly with “calf’s milk,” and “veggie burger” would be on the same playing field as “cow burger.” That way, consumers could make truly informed choices.

If there’s truly concern about “duping” or “confusing” consumers, the industry should start by examining its own euphemistic language, not only in their products but in their practices. For instance,

• The egg and poultry industries refer to slicing off the tips of chicks’ beaks without anesthesia as “beak conditioning.”

• The dairy industry calls cutting off cows’ tails “tail trimming.”

• The pork industry refers to confining pregnant pigs in crates as “maternity pens” or “individual gestation accommodations.”

• And when piglets are killed by the common industry practice of slamming their heads against hard surfaces, the term used is “blunt force trauma.”

If truth in labeling is really the goal, then let’s call these practices what they are.

A Dying Industry’s Last Stand

The animal exploitation industries—and the politicians who benefit from their deep pockets—know exactly how powerful language is. That’s why they work so hard to obscure the truth of their practices and products from the public.

Trying to control the words used by plant-based companies—words the public already understands and embraces—is a desperate, short-sighted attempt to preserve a dying paradigm.

But the tide has already turned. Consumer demand is shifting, and younger generations are redefining what food—and food values—look like.

And all the while, the animal-based meat, dairy, and egg companies are missing a golden opportunity to give customers what they want: animal-free versions that provide the fat, salt, flavor, familiarity, and texture without the cruelty, cholesterol, and climate change.

Instead of policing language, these industries could be helping to build the future.

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