Many of us enjoy a burger from time to time. You may even enjoy a ‘beefburger,’ and when thinking of a sausage, no doubt meat will be involved. So a recent legal tussle over what the vegetarian versions of these products should or could be called is of some culinary interest to us all. It also affects the cement industry, as we shall come to see.
The legal fight was between the European Vegetarian Union (EVU) and the French State1, which had proposed a law which said that “terms like ‘sausage,’ ‘steak’ and ‘burger’ can only refer to meat products.” The EVU claimed that such a law would mean that “vegetarian meat-replacement products produced elsewhere in the EU can no longer be sold in France, violating the principle of a single open market.” On the other side of the argument, supporters of the law said that it would, in fact, protect consumers who may confuse veggie and meat-based ‘burgers.’
However, European politicians eventually sided with the vegetarians, decreeing in October 20202 that “plant-based products that do not contain meat can continue to be labelled ‘sausages’ or ‘burgers,’ and that so-called veggie burgers, soy steaks and vegan sausages can continue to be sold as such in restaurants and shops across the European Union. The decision goes against the run-of-play for the vegetarians: terms like ‘almond milk’ and ‘soy yoghurt’ were banned in Europe in 2017, after the bloc’s top court ruled that purely plant-based products cannot be marketed using terms such as milk, butter or cheese, which are reserved for dairy animal products.”2 For example, ‘soya milk’ must now be labelled as ‘soya drink.’3
The sausage victory is a happy one for the vegetarians, since they may otherwise have been obliged to call their products the less-than-appetising-sounding ‘veggie disks,’ ‘Quorn-based veggie tubes,’ ‘soya slices’ and ‘vegan-protein seitan slabs.’ Yuck! But what, I hear you ask, has this got to do with the ‘cement’ industry? Well, potentially a lot, depending on what you mean by ‘cement.’
At this point it is critical to distinguish between the verb ‘to cement,’ and the noun ‘cement’ meaning a substance which is used as a binder, such as for mortars and concretes (but also for other uses such as ‘dental cement’). I can’t argue with the use of cement as a verb, since its use is ubiquitous, like ‘hoovering’ for using a vacuum cleaner. Giving flowers will cement your relationship, after all. It’s the use of the word cement’ to describe the product (I’ve made the first letter of cement bold in this column, to make it clear that I’m talking about cement - the product).
On one hand, new cement-like binders may be marketed as ‘cement,’ whereas they are not quite ‘the real thing.’ It is arguable that ‘cement’ actually refers to the cement industry’s product starting from the 1700s and 1800s, which is to say Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Cement among the public is, again arguably, a shorthand for OPC. When the public thinks of ‘cement,’ it is probably not thinking of any new-fangled binder which either contains very little Portland clinker, or none at all. Would the traditional cement industry have a case against the newcomers, in trying to defend the traditional usage of the word ‘cement’ - just as the dairy industry was successful in defending the terms ‘milk’ and ‘yoghurt’?
On the other hand, the industry might eventually come to believe that the ‘cement’ name is one that is eternally tarnished due to its CO2-intensity, and that the products of the industry need a fundamental re-brand. The (iron and steel) slag industry is a parallel case in point, since ‘slag’ is an offensive term (for a person with loose sexual morals) in a number of countries. ‘Slag’ could really do with a better name. At the Global Slag Conference, we have brainstormed new words for slag, but none has yet gained traction.
Perhaps the cement industry could try and find a non-trademarked, generic term for non-OPC-based cementitious binder products, which could be promoted as a new low/no-CO2 alternative to old-style ‘cement.’ ‘Binderment’ is my favourite for today.
A third way exists, which really reflects the status quo, the current situation. Everyone has the right to call their binder ‘cement,’ whether it be ‘full-fat’ OPC, a blended cement, LC3 cement, a geopolymer, a slag cement, an enzyme-based bio-cement, or something even more esoteric yet-to-be-invented. In this case, cement would turn out to be the equivalent of ‘steak,’ ‘burger’ or ‘sausage’ - or hoover - a concept that has become so universally used that it is impossible to defend or own by legal means. Honestly, I’m surprised that it hasn’t already been tested in the courts!
1 https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/eu-aff airs/120785/vegetarians-fight-new law-that-burger-can-only-refer-to-meat/airs/120785/vegetarians-fight-new-law-that-burger-can-only-refer-to-meat/
2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/european-farmers-lose-attempt-to-ban-terms-such-veggie-burger attempt-to-ban-terms-such-veggie-burger
3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48676145