WHAT?! IS?! MEAT?! Missouri Label Law Says it Comes From An Animal; Some Disagree
When it comes to meat products, this is a major market within the United States. Besides Lady Gaga wearing a slab of red meats, Americans on average eat over 100 pounds of meat per year. But, what does meat have to do with law?
On August 29th, 2018, a Missouri law was passed to require that only products that come from slaughterhouses, once-breathing animals can be marketed as meat. Specifically, the law labels meat as something that is harvest from production livestock or poultry. The law is intended to inform the public on what exactly is in the product.
For instance, in cases in which plant-based products (soy, eggplant, etc.) are made into burgers, they cannot be labeled as such since they did not come from a slaughterhouse and were not “once-breathing animals.”
A similar bill is currently being reviewed within the Senate. The US Department of Agriculture is considering to establish beef and meat labeling requirements and to exclude products not derived directly from animals raised and slaughtered from the definition of “beef” and “meat”.
The reason for this law, on a federal level, is to better inform consumers and there are no labeling requirements currently for labeling beef or meat. The major concern is from a non-profit corporation from Montana called the “United States Cattlemen’s Association” and are concerned with the ‘synthetic products’ being introduced into the market and being marketed as ‘beef’.
The controversy over this case comes from people who consider plant-based products as ‘meaty’ or ‘soy roast beef’. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that this categorizing infringes on the First Amendment rights and prevents the clear and accurate labeling of plant-based and clean meat products. The plaintiffs claim that this is a way for them to stifle plant-based meats in grocery stores.
A similar lawsuit was filed in Florida. A state law required milk product to be labeled as “skim milk” only if it had the same level of Vitamin A as whole milk. Dairy farmers begged to differ and sued, saying that their product was skim milk and should be deemed as such. Ultimately, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in the dairy farmer’s favor since the farm’s “use of the words ‘skim milk’ to describe its skim milk is not inherently misleading.”
Overall, this case is currently being debated and it is now your turn to voice your opinion!
Questions:
What does the US Department of Agriculture do?
How do you feel the First Amendment does or does not apply to this case?
Should plant-based products be allowed to use the word ‘meat’ in their name, and why do you feel that way?
Explain your answers and for more details you can read the article this piece was sourced from here: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/29/642937901/whats-meat-anyway-missouri-label-law-says-it-comes-from-an-animal-some-disagree?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180829
Here’s an optional additional starting place as you develop your responses (Note: Consider the source! Who’s writing it, and do they have a story they want you to believe, or are they presenting all the facts?):
http://www.uscattlemen.org/Templates/pdfs_USCA/2018-PDFs/2-9-18USCA-AMS-Petition-re-definition-of-beef-and-meat.pdf
Contributed by - J. Pennington