Imitation Milk Product

[Pertinacious Tom]

Imitation Beef Product
 

Calling it Beyond Meat may soon be beyond the law in the Lone Star State. A bill advancing through the Texas legislature would pile new regulations on how the makers of plant-based and lab-grown foods could label their products.

On Monday, the Texas House of Representatives passed H.B. 316. The bill amends the state's food labeling laws to prevent newly defined "analogue" foods—a category that includes products from companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat—from using terms like "beef," "meat," and "pork" on their packaging.

Plant-based food producers could still use terms like "burger," according to The Dallas Morning News. But any such analogue burger or sausage would need to have "plant-based," "meatless," "made from plants," or "a similar qualifying term or disclaimer" prominently displayed on the label.  H.B. 316 would apply similar restrictions to lab-grown meat, which would have to come with a "lab-grown" or "cell-cultured" label.

...

"As technology advances and food products for consumption are created using alternative ingredients and methods, Texans need the ability to make the distinction between meat originating from a carcass, meat substitutes, and cell-cultured products," reads a committee report on the bill. Its primary author is  Rep. Brad Buckley (R–Killeen).

Opponents of the bill argue that the proposed regulations would do more to confuse than to clarify what consumers are buying. "Calling the burger 'plant-based meat,' combined with the ground beef appearance of the burger, lets home cooks know what to do with the burger when they unwrap it: cook it like they would ground beef," said Chuck Mains of Impossible Foods in a public comment on the bill.

Texas's bill is part of a trend. State legislatures across the country have introduced or passed bills regulating how plant-based foods can be labeled. Most have been the subject of lawsuits from plant-based food producers who argue that labeling restrictions violate their First Amendment rights to free speech.

"The First amendment turns on what a reasonable consumer will understand. If a reasonable consumer understands what you're saying, then the government isn't allowed to make you change what you're saying," says Justin Pearson, a nutjob with the Institute for Justice. "Just like reasonable consumers understand that chickens don't have fingers, and you shouldn't wear cotton candy, a reasonable consumer understands these plant-based meat terms."

...

Consumers aren't confused about these new "meat" products and the products are already making a point of advertising that they're plant based.

The alleged problems this censorship effort is seeking to address don't exist and aren't the real problem. The real problem is that they don't want the competition. Too bad.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Imitation Butter and Cheese Product
 

On August 11, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Miyoko's Creamery in its lawsuit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), upholding the company's First Amendment right to use terms like butter and cheese in marketing its vegan products.

...

California ordered the company to remove the terms butter and cheese and cease to refer to its products as "lactose-free," "hormone-free," or "cruelty-free." Instead, the state suggested that Miyoko market its vegan butter as oh-so-appetizing "cashew cream fermented from live cultures."

...

In his August 11 ruling, Seeborg found the creamery's marketing tactics to be truthful and upheld the company's First Amendment rights to label its products as vegan alternatives to traditional dairy. Seeborg also pointed out a major hole in the state of California's argument: There was no evidence of consumer confusion or marketing deception.

"The state's showing of broad marketplace confusion around plant-based dairy alternatives is empirically underwhelming," he said. "Nowhere, for instance, does the state present testimony from a shopper tricked by Miyoko's vegan butter, or otherwise make the case for why Miyoko's substitute spread is uniquely threatening to the public."

The ruling marks a major victory for free speech and free markets in the vegan space. According to ALDF Executive Director Stephen Wells, the decision also chips away at the corrupting power that industry lobbyists wield over governmental agencies.

...

Hmm... I prefer to have my dairy products with all the lactose, hormones, and cruelty included, but agree with the judge that no consumers are really confused by this marketing.

 

[WhoaTed]

What lab-grown meat tastes like:



Side story: she was hoarding creamers from the coffee room.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Something you won't hear in my kitchen but I'm glad to hear from a court:

Tofurky for the Win!

...
Last month, a federal court ruled an Arkansas law that banned makers of meat alternatives such as Tofurky from using commonly understood words to describe their products was unconstitutional.

"The law prohibited the labeling of any food product as 'meat' unless that food product was derived from livestock, and it banned such terms as 'veggie sausage' and 'veggie burger' from food labeling in Arkansas," the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in the wake of the court's ruling. The same court had in 2019 granted Tofurky an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law shortly after it took effect and the suit was filed.

The Arkansas law, U.S. District Court Judge Kristine Baker explained in her ruling, unconstitutionally barred Tofurky from "convey[ing] meaningful, helpful information to consumers about the products they are purchasing, and Tofurky's repeated indications that the food products contained in these packages contain no animal-based meat dispel consumer confusion."

The Arkansas suit is one of several filed by Tofurky and others—including other vegan-food producers and the American Civil Liberties Union, Good Food Institute, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Plant-Based Foods Association, and Kochy Nutjobs—against several states that have adopted laws similar to that in Arkansas.
...

As often happens, I find myself agreeing with the ACLU and Kochy nutjobs again.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The FDA's milk label guidelines are not as bad as one might expect.

On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released new draft regulatory guidance that would allow makers of almond, soy, pea, walnut, and more "plant-based milk alternative" (PBMA) products to keep calling their products milk.


The agency is, however, encouraging these milk alternative companies to voluntarily include information on their labels explaining the nutritional differences between their products and cow milk.


"The FDA determined that consumers generally understand that PBMA do not contain milk and choose to purchase PBMA because they are not milk," reads the FDA's draft guidance. "However, many consumers may not be aware of the nutritional differences between milk and PBMA products."


In a more normal world, one would think consumers could be trusted to understand all on their own that almond milk comes from almonds and not cows.


But as nondairy milk products have grown more and more popular, the dairy industry and elected politicians from dairy-producing states have pushed for regulations that would ensure the words almond and milk don't appear on the same label.
...
The dairy industry has expressed disappointment with the new guidance.


"It falls short of ending the decades-old problem of misleading plant-based labeling using dairy terminology," said the National Milk Producers Federation in a statement. "The decision to permit such beverages to continue inappropriately using dairy terminology violates FDA's own standards of identity, which clearly define dairy terms as animal-based products."
...
Defenders of oat and almond milk in Congress have noted in the past that these kinds of nutritional comparisons are not currently required of dairy milks from other animals.


"[The] FDA has not previously asked producers to disclose other wide variations in nutritional components—including among milks derived from different animals. Goat milk, for example, has less folate, zinc, riboflavin and vitamin B12 than cow milk. Buffalo milk has twice as much saturated fat as cow milk, as well as considerably more calcium," wrote Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.), Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), Rep. Julia Brownley (D–Calif.), and Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) in a 2022 letter to the Biden administration.


For now, the FDA's guidance about making nutritional comparisons on labels is voluntary.
...

I suddenly have a craving for buffalo milk. For the calcium, of course.



Mmmm....saturated fat.

 

[BeSafe]

This part of marketing is super important to a lot of people and I can see it as somewhat intellectually curious on the impact on sales but ultimately just falls outside my circle of altruism so this'll be my last comment

To me, something like a 'burger' describes a fried patty made of something - with the something being the adjective tagged on for clarity. Same with regards to things like milk. Protectionism mascarading as safety diminishes both.

 

[Blue Crab]

The simple solution is labeling dairy products as cow milk for the folks who don't already realize that almonds aren't cows. You know, repubs and other school dropouts.

 

[badlatitude]

The simple solution is labeling dairy products as cow milk for the folks who don't already realize that almonds aren't cows. You know, repubs and other school dropouts.

Don't you mean anyone with "Mad Trump disease?"

 

[Blue Crab]

Don't you mean anyone with "Mad Trump disease?"

Here's two words I've grown to dislike: I do.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

And on the other end of the "what can be milk" spectrum, there are those who think that white stuff in your grocery store isn't any more milk than the nearby almond squeezin's.

What's milk? REAL cow squeezin's, right from the cow!

...
This week, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed House Bill 1515, which would legalize dairy farms to sell raw milk to consumers. "A debate over whether dairy farms should be able to sell unpasteurized milk pitted proponents of consumer freedom against advocates for public health," the Bismarck Tribune reported this week.

Currently, farmers in North Dakota may only legally sell raw milk to consumers who purchase a share of a cow, sometimes known as a herd share.
...

Now I want buffalo milk AND a piece of a cow.

It turns out they mean water buffalo, not Bison that roamed the plains, and buying their milk isn't all that easy or cheap. I still want to try some. My neighbors have cows but I have never had raw milk. I'm a curious omnivore though...

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Buffalo Wild Wings aren't wild, aren't made of bison, and aren't even wings!!!

...
Halim is represented by Treehouse Law, a Los Angeles outfit that bills itself as the country's "premier consumer class action firm." His lawyers argue that Buffalo Wild Wings' shocking scam violates the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and constitutes breach of express warranty and common law fraud. They propose a class action on behalf of Halim and "similarly situated" consumers across the country, who they say are "entitled to restitution, disgorgement, and/or the imposition of a constructive trust upon all profits, benefits, and other compensation obtained by [Buffalo Wild Wings] from its deceptive, misleading, and unlawful conduct."

Instead of acknowledging its wrongdoing, Buffalo Wild Wings added insult to injury by mocking Halim's claims. "It's true," the company tweeted this week. "Our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo."

The chain's indifference to the suffering it has inflicted on consumers like Halim is part of a pattern, Halim's lawyers note. It has been well aware of this issue at least since 2020, when a Lincoln, Nebraska, consumer "called out restaurants like Buffalo
Wild Wings for using the name 'Boneless Wing'" in a "speech he made to his local city council."

That brave man, Ander Christensen, did not hesitate to tell the plain truth: "Nothing about boneless chicken wings actually come(s) from the wing of a chicken. We would be disgusted if a butcher was mislabeling their cuts of meats, but then we go around pretending as though the breast of the chicken is its wing."
...

"Our hamburgers contain no ham." That's awesome and I'm going to have to stop next time I see a Buffalo Wild Breasts!

 

[Dex Sawash]

Subscribe to my "What happened to haggis at McDonald's" podcast

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Gruyere doesn't have to be Gruyère

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Low-FODMAP Food? You can't say that because no one said it back when we wrote the rules about what you can say!

Today, a customer and a small business owner filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over a policy that prevents businesses from truthfully labeling their food products. Customer Michelle Przybocki and Gourmend Foods Founder Ketan Vakil teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to challenge the regulation that prevents businesses from truthfully labeling their products as low-FODMAP, an acronym for foods that are made with easily digestible ingredients.


The government does not contend that these statements are false. The truthful information that Ketan and other business owners want to provide to customers like Michelle is banned only because it does not appear on the government’s outdated list of allowable “nutrient content claims.” Any nutrient content claims that are not on the list are forbidden.


“The government does not get to decide which facts consumers are allowed to learn,” said IJ Senior Nutjob Justin Pearson. “Businesses have the right to tell the truth, and customers have a right to hear that truthful information. Banning factual information isn’t just harmful, it’s unconstitutional.”


In recent years, the low-FODMAP diet has become a popular option for people with sensitive stomachs. Easy to digest, low-FODMAP foods include eggs, meat, almond milk, oats, and quinoa. On the other hand, those on the low-FODMAP diet are encouraged to avoid dairy, onion, garlic, and other foods that can cause digestive discomfort.
...

I agree with Justin the Nut.

I had to look it up.

FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols

Jeezus. Could they make eating any less fun? I want mine covered with cheese and garlic.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Kochy Comments on FDA Draft Guidance on Milk

The FDA should be commended for rejecting the dairy industry’s self-interested
overtures to impose a ban on commonly understood terms like “coconut milk” and
“almond milk.” If adopted, the industry’s proposed ban would have violated the First
Amendment by banning terms that are not misleading when used in context.

...

IJ asks the agency to reconsider the second part of its draft guidance, wherein the
FDA recommends “voluntary nutrient statements” for plant-based food labels. It should
be noted that this is a lesser problem than the ban proposed by the dairy industry
discussed above. Therefore, if the FDA were forced to choose between imposing a ban or
rejecting the ban while recommending voluntary nutrient statements, then the FDA made
the right choice. However, it does not appear that such a choice was required, and the
better approach would be neither to impose a ban nor to recommend voluntary nutrient
statements.
The problems with the voluntary nutrient statements are twofold. First, they are
bad policy, as government-created statements have a history of increasing consumer
confusion rather than decreasing it. Second, although truly voluntary policies are not
unconstitutional, there is a risk that these voluntary statements could eventually devolve
into either explicitly or implicitly mandated requirements, in which case the First
Amendment might be violated.
First, the recommendations are bad policy because they are based on a misguided,
dairy-centric view. Plant-based milks are healthier than dairy milks in some ways and
less healthy in others. And, of course, the converse is also true. Yet, the recommended
statements only look at one side of the equation by asking plant-based sellers to disclaim
the specific ways in which they are less healthy without asking dairy-milk sellers to
disclaim the specific aspects in which dairy milk is less healthy. To be clear, the better
approach would be to recommend statements for neither plant-based milks nor dairy
milks, but if the FDA is determined to pursue such an approach, then it should do so in an
evenhanded manner.

Voluntary government-recommended statements?

Those don't require any recommendation.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Heh. Wood Milk.

The Aubrey Plaza ad for Big Dairy that may have violated federal law, explained

...
the main point of the ad arrives at the end, when Plaza asks the camera in the same sarcastic style, “Is Wood Milk real? Absolutely not. Only real milk is real.” Black text on the screen reads “IS YOUR MILK REAL?” and the commercial ends with the iconic “got milk?” slogan. “Obviously, Wood Milk has zero nutritional value,” viewers are warned.

Plaza was mocking plant-based milk on behalf of the Milk Processor Education Program, or MilkPEP, the quasi-governmental dairy industry organization administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that ran the “got milk?” campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s.

The latest twist: The ad may be illegal, according to a complaint filed last week with the USDA Office of the Inspector General by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a group that advocates for plant-based eating. (Disclosure: My partner worked at PCRM from 2009 to 2017.)

MilkPEP is barred by federal statute from engaging in activities “... disparaging to another agricultural commodity,” and by federal regulation from employing “unfair or deceptive acts or practices with respect to the quality, value or use of any competing product,” PCRM’s complaint points out.

PCRM argues the Wood Milk ad also illegally attempted to influence government policy, as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently formulating rules around how plant-based milks can be labeled. In February, the FDA published draft guidance that allows for plant-based milk companies to call their products “milk” so long as they identify the main ingredient (e.g., oats), to the ire of the dairy industry.

Yin Woon Rani, the CEO of MilkPEP, told a dairy industry publication in May that it created the satirical ad in response to the FDA draft guidance in order to start a conversation about the nutritional differences between cow’s milk and plant-based milk.
...

Got illegal boondoggling propaganda?

 

[BeSafe]

Plaza is an awesome comedian. Satire is only satirical if the source material does, in fact, deserve to be satirized.

I don't really care enough to research it but wasn't there a big kerfuffle about juices actually having to contain the fruit they're named after? So 'orange juice' did, in fact, have to contain...wait for it... oranges? Otherwise, it's 'Orange Drink'?

The nut-drink folks glomed on to the milk name, not the other way around. "Almond Milk" is "Almond Drink" but they wanted the 'milk' for marketing and now they're upset because they're being mocked. Because it IS mockable.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The nut-drink folks glomed on to the milk name, not the other way around. "Almond Milk" is "Almond Drink" but they wanted the 'milk' for marketing and now they're upset because they're being mocked. Because it IS mockable.

Mocking is one thing, banning is another. I'm first to mock non-dairy products. I can believe it's not butter. But if they want to call it that, OK.

 

[Raz'r]

Plaza is an awesome comedian. Satire is only satirical if the source material does, in fact, deserve to be satirized.

I don't really care enough to research it but wasn't there a big kerfuffle about juices actually having to contain the fruit they're named after? So 'orange juice' did, in fact, have to contain...wait for it... oranges? Otherwise, it's 'Orange Drink'?

The nut-drink folks glomed on to the milk name, not the other way around. "Almond Milk" is "Almond Drink" but they wanted the 'milk' for marketing and now they're upset because they're being mocked. Because it IS mockable.

What about fakebertarians pretending to be libertarians? Can we mock them too?

 

[Steam Flyer]

Plaza is an awesome comedian. Satire is only satirical if the source material does, in fact, deserve to be satirized.

I don't really care enough to research it but wasn't there a big kerfuffle about juices actually having to contain the fruit they're named after? So 'orange juice' did, in fact, have to contain...wait for it... oranges? Otherwise, it's 'Orange Drink'?

The nut-drink folks glomed on to the milk name, not the other way around. "Almond Milk" is "Almond Drink" but they wanted the 'milk' for marketing and now they're upset because they're being mocked. Because it IS mockable.

But marketing -IS- reality.
it's not milk because somebody says it is "milk," it's milk because ADVERTISING says it's milk!

Just like drinking Pepsi gives you a brighter smile and girlfriend with big boobs.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

" This week, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed House Bill 1515, which would legalize dairy farms to sell raw milk to consumers. "A debate over whether dairy farms should be able to sell unpasteurized milk pitted proponents of consumer freedom against advocates for public health, "

This is interesting.
When I was a kid on the farm, there was a woman in the area who simply could not make enough "Mom milk" to feed her baby, and cow milk wasn't working either.

We gave her goat milk.

raw, unpasteurized, not "inspected"
, hand milked (by me)
, filtered through several layers of cheesecloth and into the 'fridge

Baby formula

This started with contamination of formula with bacteria. I suppose if we don't care about infecting infants we could have all the formula we want... https://www.cdc.gov/cronobacter/outbreaks/infant-formula.html...

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