This move will expand the public's belief that regulation means "a ridiculous incursion of rights," leading to greater belief that society is better off without regulation.
It depends, its a war between the right to know what you are eating without studying it thoroughly first and the right to claim things as something that they are not.
In Europe people tend to be the first kind and see the government as tool for protecting them from the second kind.
Veggie burger is the flashy headline that makes you click stuff. What actually is happening is that they are creating a framework for stricter definitions(for many things, like sausages) that will be adopted by 27 countries in 24 different languages.
The "veggie burger" can be in the text of Malta or Ireland but who knows. They are talking about protecting some words. There are so many languages in EU, everyone calls these things differently. There's something similar against calling things not made from dairy milk or yogurt.
Vegans are infuriated apparently, maybe they can join forces with the libertarians and topple the EU so they can fight among themselves in peace.
There is a long history of legal use of words about what foods are. Like what you are allowed to call 'butter' or 'beer'. There's also the regional names like parmesan and champagne. This looks like its following that established norm.
Yeah but like Hamburger is not from Hamburg though... Maybe you could say Hamburg steak or something but Hamburgers as we know them almost certainly originated in the US.
I don't think accurate food labeling is a bad thing but the contension shouldn't really be around burger to me that's just a pressed shape of cruft but the veggie part. Because Veggie I feel like implies vegatable but like soy-protein or bean mush or impossible burger all could be classified as a veggie burger but like they are very different things and have very different additives. I don't think we are crushing people or industry by trying to accurately label foods though.
I do think that the protectinism to regional foods confusing though. It would be interesting if you could make "feta" elsewhere than in greece for example, but maybe like the originating countries could get a special sigil rather than an exclusively protected food name when its basically indistingusiable to all but a connoisseur.
The butter is my favorite exemple: peanut butter, cacao butter, Vitellaria butter…
"What food are" actually refer to what people use that word for and not necessarily what is the strict scientific definition. I’m sure most knows what’s a "plant burger", although I concede the current law is confusing as you can call an egg or diary many based patty as such.
I'd call it a net negative. A lot of regulations are straight up good - clean drinking water, food safety, no sketchy chemicals in clothes, electric appliances that don't catch on fire, the GDPR, consumer protections etc etc are all unequivocally good things.
Things like this bring the very useful tool of regulations into disrepute.
"Veggie burger" as a term has been in common usage by the public long before any of the other words that convey the same thing.