EU moves to regulate vegetarian burgers and sausages.
Another Yes Minister episode retains its relevance:
I tend to agree. New products shouldnât âborrowâ the name from an established product. Soya Milk isnât the same as Cow or Goat or Lamb or Elephant or other Mammal milk.
In Switzerland reduced fat milk isnât milk, itâs drink.
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Scottish square sausages say helloâŠ
âVegan sausageâ is not exactly peak creativity. So, the complains about stifling innovation are a bit funny. Just for comparison, look at the words tofu and cheese in Chinese. The word cheese is the combination of two words: milk ferment. The word tofu is the mix of two other words: bean ferment. There was no need to call tofu vegan cheese, ever. Language is infinite, just invent a new damned word.
Back to Europe, thereâs some laziness. Pomme de terre? Just coin a new damned word. The creation of the word potato in English was not rocket science, borrow some syllables from languages from America and Spanish and get it done. Vegan sausage has a bit of that pomme de terre laziness which was OK some centuries ago, but we live today in a world with AOC/DOC and regulated labeling. It doesnât work anymore.
Anyway, the FT points to real costs with real consequences. Redesigning packaging is a cost, but producers do it anyway after a few years. If the requirement is set by 2030, Iâd assume most producers would redesign their packaging anyway by then.
What is ridicule is worrying about relabeling stock because food expires quite quickly. I also donât understand why trademarks are brought into discussion. Who owns TODAY the âvegan burgerâ trademark and itâs at risk of losing it?
For a start-up, being told overnight that you can no longer call your best-selling pea-protein product a âsausageâ is not a minor tweak. It means redesigning packaging, relabeling stock, re-registering trademarks. Many wonât survive a new layer of regulation.
Back to Chinese/Mandarin, look again at tofu and cheese. Stop being lazy 
Another comparison, a California judge ruled last December that Tesla offering Full Self-Driving was deceptive marketing. Tesla changed it to Full Self-Driving (Supervised)-.
It seems the FT journalist is a bit sensitive to whatever happens in the EU, but lacks a global perspective. Itâs not that the EU is too restrictive, itâs that the UK let everyone do whatever they want. Once again, Tesla is a great example:
Maybe it belongs to everyone? âBurgerâ is âcitizenâ in German, after allâŠ
Also, sausage is a word on a long journey from its Latin origins:
late Middle English: from Old Northern French saussiche , from medieval Latin salsicia , from Latin salsus âsaltedâ
Iâm not that fussed about people using accepted wording for âbranchâ products - who cares? If people know what you mean in one or two words, why mess up your branding with some clunky new name that everyone hates.
Look at the prevalence of Dysons and other brands of vacuum cleaner on the market yet anyone in the English speaking world would instantly know what you meant if you said you were going to âHooverâ the carpet.
Iâm not sure about the artificial âveganâ sausages, they could be like military-grade biscuits, expiring after 20 years or so 
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Or coconut milkâŠ
Personally Iâm Ok with the words being used but the law ought to stipulate that they have to be proceeded by either the word âVeganâ, or âVeggieâ.
My SIL bought me what she thought was some yoghurt when we were in the UK for a meet-up - except it wasnât yoghurt but some soya concoction so confusion is possible without adequate labelling.
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Sorry, BĂŒrger is a citizen.
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I know. I was just leaning (heavily) on poetic licence⊠
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I once bought a bread, Zopf to be exact, and it tasted like shit. Then I read on the package that it was a vegan Zopf. Little wonder that it was the only Zopf still on the shelf.
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I donât so much mind sausage and burger being used for non-meat products, after all, we would normally expect sausage to be prefaced either with its meat or some specific type that would describe it. Kalbsbratwurst cannot be vegan, nor can Saucise de Lyon. And if we allow chicken or lamb burgers then bean or soy ones are equally valid as descriptors.
What does annoy me though is when I find what looks like minced beef in the meat display which turns out to be 50% soya. Grrr. Labelled just as âhachĂ© bolognaiseâ in French, IIRC (where âhachĂ©â is generally analogous with âminceâ). It really should state much more clearly that it is not all meat, rather than needing to look at the ingredients.
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I always have a well fired roll on square sausage when I go home. Well fired rolls are best when theyâre blackened on the top and soft inside. You can make Lorne yourself, there are Scottish people showing how on YouTube. Maybe Iâll have a go, I used to bring Lorne, black pudding and back bacon back with me before Brexit. Never managed a couple of pairs of Arbroath Smokies though 
140 years ago, 15-year-old Charlie placed meatballs between two slices of bread at a market. Because there were many German immigrants in his town, he knew that this food was very popular in Hamburg. Thatâs why he called it a âhamburger.â
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inventing a new name for an object is harder than what it looks â it doesnât just need to be different, innovative and easy to remember (and also in a way reminiscent of the object), it also needs a massive investment to create awareness, make the âuserâ search for information about the name, and create knowledge, make sure that it is memorable enough to assure early usage, and then adoption⊠and it doesnât matter if it is a brand or a generic name â a lot of neologisms are born dead, and very few make it to (social) media - let alone, to the dictionariesâŠ
Obviously, a first " brand" arrival could become a common name; f.ex. âkleenexâ for paper handkerchiefs, or âtampaxâ for tampons.
So, what should be a vegan burger? A Vegger? And a vegetarian sausage? A Vegsau? I am sure the companies behind the products (a couple of them very powerful) made all of the research and decided not to go that wayâŠ