Rejected petition Direct Trading Standards to allow plant-based brands to use dairy-related terms.
Draft guidelines from Trading Standards show its intent to prohibit vegan brands from using “misspelling[s], homophonic words or non-alphabet symbols” to refer to dairy terms.
The changes will hinder a growing market. The government should direct Trading Standards to rescind these guidelines.
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The plant-based food and drink industry generates hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue each year and is a dynamic product innovator in the UK economy.
These guidelines would prevent brands from continuing to use terms such as “mylk”, “sheese” and “b+tter” that they have used for years to describe their products.
There is no evidence of consumer confusion on this front, so the changes would achieve little other than adding costs to an industry already battling rising prices.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.
We can only accept petitions about things the Government or Parliament are directly responsible for.
The guidance produced by the Food Standards and Information Focus Group (FSIFG) is a matter for trading standards officers, not the UK Government or Parliament.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.