Vegetarian butcher can keep selling ‘chicken’ and ‘meat balls’

The food standards authority VWA has decided not to take any action against a shop in The Hague which sells meat replacement products under the names ‘chicken bits’, ‘meat balls’ and ‘bacon cubes’, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.


The paper says the VWA had received several complaints from people protesting at labels used by De Vegetarische Slager (vegetarian butcher) but is not planning to take any action.
Although the VWA has told the shop that it should not be using the meat-related names, the case is not a priority. ‘We would have a reason to intervene if the names were confusing, but this is not the case,’ a spokesman told the paper.
Tempting
A spokesman for the shop, which started up two years ago, told the Volkskrant the names are all a matter of taste. ‘A soya ball does not sound as tempting,’ Jaap Kortweg told the paper. ‘We want to keep our names as simple and as close to meat as possible. So it says ‘chicken’ because that is what people expect.’
Korteweg points out that supermarkets like Albert Heijn use the terms schnitzel and sausage on their vegetarian products.
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