A plant-based product labelled as 'mince' hits Woolworths
shelves, sparking anger.
A decision by a major supermarket to sell 'mince' made from plants in
the red meat aisle has angered farm lobby groups and infuriated a National
Party senator.
Woolworths has placed a faux-mince product, made from plants and
vegetables, in the meat section of its supermarkets under the brand name Funky
Fields.
Competitor Coles will next week start trialling one of the world's
best-known beef patty substitutes, Beyond Burger, in some of its Victorian
stores.
In April, France banned the use of meat and dairy-related terms on vegan
and vegetarian plant-based alternatives, while major farm groups in the United
States are currently lobbying the nation's Department of Agriculture to do the
same.
The National Farmers Federation has previously been hesitant to call for
blanket bans on such terms, but president Fiona Simson has changed her mind.
"We need some decisions around what is meat
and what is milk and how that should appear on a product label," she said.
"France is a country that really values where a product comes from
and how it has been created, so it is interesting they took the lead on this,
and we now need to follow this.
"We need to work out what we are taking to government and what government's
role is in this to make sure we can pursue a labelling regime that is
beneficial to consumers and producers."
Pull plant 'mince'
from shelves: O'Sullivan
National Party senator Barry O'Sullivan has demanded Woolworths remove the
product and re-label it, so the Federal Government does not have to step in.
"Woolworths need to pull it from the shelves today," Senator
Sullivan told the ABC.
"Take it out the back and give it another name
and call it whatever it is. But not 'mince', because that is crazy."
Senator O'Sullivan is expecting food labelling to become increasingly
complex, and said the major supermarkets had a responsibility to shoppers.
"Have we gotten to a position in a nanny state where the government
has to go from shelf to shelf, line by line, on every product and commodity and
create legislation? No-one wants that," he said.
"I call on Woolworths and any other retailers to deal with this
themselves, don't put us in a situation where government has to start to buy
into more regulation or legislation."
Woolworths did not tell the ABC why it had decided to sell a plant
product in the meat section, or respond to questions about claims it was
misleading to consumers.
"We know some customers are looking to eat less traditional protein
in their diets … in response we are pleased to range the [minced product] in
our meat section to meet this demand," a Woolworths spokesperson said.
While farm lobby groups were hoping Woolworths was only
trialling the move, the supermarket giant confirmed to the ABC that it is a
permanent decision. Woolworths would not say whether other faux meat products
would be relocated to the chilled meat section.
Earlier
this week the UK's second-largest supermarket, Sainsbury's, announced that from
the end of the month it will start selling a plant-based mince, made by Danish
company Naturli Foods, in the chiller section of 400 stores.
"This
is the first time consumers can buy a 100 per cent plant-based mince product
that looks and tastes like minced beef, replace minced beef in all recipes, and
be found in the cold counter next to the traditional beef," Henrik Lung
from Naturli Foods said.
Naturli
Foods is also the company behind the Funky Fields products.
Coles
said it would place its new range of plant-based Beyond Burger patties, which
have a similar taste and texture to traditional burgers, in its frozen section
rather than the meat aisle, when it starts trialling them next week.
"Our
chilled health range has seen double-digit growth with the most popular
products including falafel balls, kale burgers and tofu," a Coles
spokesperson said.
"We
have seen demand significantly grow for vegetarian products in the past 12
months."
Farm lobby fury
over 'meat' claims
The developments both in Australia and abroad have angered the Cattle
Council of Australia (CCA), the nation's peak lobby group for producers of
grass-fed beef.
"By placing the product within the defined meat protein cabinet the
consumer is led to believe that the product is of equivalent source and this
placement may mislead consumers," CCA chief executive Margo Andreas said.
"Quite simply, it's not meat!"
The labelling of plant-based meat substitutes has also upset the
Australian Meat Industry Council's Patrick Hutchinson, who said the entire
production supply chain needed to work together to address the issue.
"What we will be doing as an industry, farmers and processors,
feedlots and retailers, is continuing our push to legislators to ensure product
is accurately described," he said.
Mr Hutchinson said the livestock industry could not interfere in where a
supermarket decided to place a product, but he said it could lobby for meat
alternative products to be labelled differently, so consumers were not duped.
"It is a problem and that is why we want accurate descriptions,
because these products are not meat, but we can't tell supermarkets where it
can or can't sell product," he said.
"This is a case of [plant-based meat companies] utilising
terminology to describe something aligned to meat because they can't sell it if
they describe it accurately.
"That [faux-mince] product is a heap of different plants — wheat,
mushroom and coconut, mixed together with binding agents, then beetroot juice
to make it red — so it should be sold for what it is."
Senator O'Sullivan accused plant-based meat makers of leveraging off of
the red meat sector's marketing edge.
"They are piggy-backing on the back of industries that have
invested hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to get their product
identified for what it is," he said.
