Stop snagging the snags! Beef farmers outraged over 'misleading' packaging on vegetarian products

Farmers are outraged that vegetarian products are being labelled as meat. Photo / Getty Images

Aussie beef farmers are complaining that non-meat products are piggybacking off their hard work by labelling vegetarian foods "plant-based beef" or "vegan sausages".

The farmers say they have worked hard to contribute to the prestige and draw that the terms "beef" or "meat" hold, and are outraged that meat-alternative products made from soybeans and other vegetable proteins are using the terms in bold letters on their packaging.

"The values that people usually attribute to beef is that it's a clean, lean protein source because of the hard work that's been done by industry associations," Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association president David Connolly told a senate committee yesterday.

"The word beef itself almost becomes our total value because that's the very essence of our brand."

Nationals Senator and former butcher Susan McDonald told the committee that vegetable protein products were labelled as meat and then being unfairly placed in the meat section of the supermarket.

"They are using pictures of a beast, the word beef, and then the words 'plant-based' in much smaller labelling," she said.

McDonald lamented that she had received complaints from people in her community complaining they had accidentally bought the vegetarian products believing they were made from real meat.

"They certainly bought the product in confusion because of the descriptors on the packaging," she said.

But the farmers' gripes with the marketing tactics were not limited to their "meat-like" classification.

Pancho Beef co-owner Rebecca Mohr-Bell complained that plant-based food manufacturers were also slapping "denigrating" claims about the meat industry on their packaging.

Mohr-Bell said that a number of the vegetarian products contained claims about meat farming and consumption being bad for the environment.

"The claim that beef uses so many 10s of 1000s of litres of water to make a kilo of beef has been disproved time and time again," she said.

"You shouldn't be able to advertise a product by saying that it's better than another one and that the other product is bad.

"You should just be talking about the quality of your product. That should then speak for itself."

The farmers told the committee they felt let down by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for not placing tighter regulations on what plant-based product manufacturers were legally permitted to put on their packaging and hoped this would change.

Mohr-Bell insisted that meat products should be "clearly identifiable" as animal-based produce, which could be easily distinguished from meat-free products on supermarket shelves.

"Our product has unique nutritional and taste characteristics which have been carefully cultivated over generations of careful breeding, research and development," she said.

"These characteristics belong to beef solely and other food products should not be allowed to get a free ride on these decades of research, investment and hard work.

"I have no problem with people being vegetarian or vegan, but I just think that if the [meat-free] products are as good as they say they are then they should brand and identify them clearly so that consumers can make an easy choice."