Italiano
Is Vegan Cheese a Cheese?
I’ll start with a little anecdote:
In April, the jury of the Good Food Awards, a prestigious award that recognizes “the contributions of American craft food producers in creating a tasty, authentic and responsible food system“, announced the finalists in the “Best Cheese” category.
Among them, is the Blue Cheese by Climax Foods, a type of vegan cheese.
It recalls, at least visually (I don’t know in taste), the traditional “cousins” subjected to blue veining.
Well, needless to say, but someone didn’t take it well.
The Climax product was removed from the list of finalists—officially disqualified —because it didn’t meet the GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) standards and was therefore not “retail ready.”
All accusations that Climax sent back to the sender, as their product was already present on the menus of several restaurants (including the three-starred, completely vegan, “Eleven Madison Park” in New York) and would have been introduced to retail shortly thereafter.
But, let’s get back to the initial question:
For a few years, there were legal controversies surrounding this topic.
In 2017, the EU Court ruled that “Plant-Based Products” cannot have ‘Dairy-Style’ names.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reckoned the nomenclature “100% dairy-free plant-based cheese” to be correct.
In 2019, The British Trade Association of the National Dairy Supplier (UK Dairy) asked a vegan product manufacturer to stop using the word “cheese” to describe dairy-free products.
In 2021, the California Department of Food and Agriculture asked a fully vegan cheesemonger company to refrain from labelling their products as “cheese“. The said company sued them back. And won.
Now cheese is a dairy product. It is derived from milk. We all know that.
Without prejudice to the fact that everyone is entitled to eat whatever they want.
But why insist on calling a surrogate like a food product that, by ethical choice, they have decided to avoid, at any cost?
The same reasoning might apply to cauliflower steak, seitan sausage and/or “fleggs“.
Well, that’s my personal opinion…
