Decades ago, Velveeta had to be labeled “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" so that customers could have truth in labeling. It was not "cheese", said the government.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission even even told Kraft they could not even advertise that their "singles" contained five ounces of milk because of the implication the cheese might have as much calcium as 5 ounces of milk when it only had as much calcium as 3.5 ounces of milk.  Government was all about mandating consumer trust in labels then.

Today anything can be called cheese. And companies are calling broccoli "rice" and plant juice "milk" and a vegetable patty a "burger." So if I want to sell lab-grown meat but call it "tofu", you can't stop me. Unless the government actually does the job it appointed itself to do.

There is nothing wrong with any of those products (well, that tofu does not exist yet), I have tried them and they are good. But that has nothing to do with the government's mandate to demand truth in labeling. Opposing the public and the government are the American Civil Liberties Union, Institute for Justice, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and more, who instead argue products should be called whatever they want, it is a First Amendment issue. 


Image: Storyblocks 

You read that right. The ACLU is against consumers having knowledge of what they buy, truth in labeling, and defending unchecked corporate marketing claims. Even the European Parliament's agriculture committee wants to keep non-meat products from claiming meat status, and Europe is not actually on the cutting edge of scientific awareness.

Businesses, which did not want patchwork legislation in 50 states regarding arbitrary GMO laws, are rightly against state rules - but states are doing it because FDA and FTC have created chaos. Now, companies don't want the federal government enforcing accuracy in labeling because they contend it would damage sales of their products, while pleading the alternative and claiming the public is not deceived by the labels they don't want to be accurate.

I kind of hope these companies win, so I can sell vegan bacon that is actually made of chicken.

One company is tweaking things the other way - they use cutting edge science to claim to be natural and raw. Made By Cow milk in Australia is completely processed, thanks to high-pressure pascalization it can last on a shelf for six weeks, but they still use Raw as a proper name, and say it is technically not deception because their pasteurization process does not use heat. And they are charging twice as much as regular milk, so they believe customers will fall for it. And if they do, it makes that vegan chicken I plant to sell seem a lot more viable.