Plant-based options for vegans have been greatly rising in recent years, the vegan community has been increasing as well. Many vegans actually like eating meat but it goes against their morals, now they can eat something similar to meat without really eating meat, this goes for dairy too. There has been an ongoing debate about whether vegan alternatives for meat and milk should be called plant-based dairy or plant-based meat. It is a very competitive debate and both sides have their arguments, however, the majority of valid arguments support calling only animal-derived products as meat and dairy. What makes a product meat is it being derived from live animals, something being made of plants is simply a vegan product, not a meat product. It is incredible how vegans have an alternative to meat now, but that is what it is, an alternative that is made out of plants, not really made out of livestock. Some states have passed laws that make plant-based “meat” not be able to be called meat, and plant-based milk not being able to be called milk.
Calling something a plant-based product and calling it meat or dairy may be misleading for many people and it is not appropriate labeling. For example, plant-based products should simply be called herb patties and have a label mentioning it being a meat alternative, not directly calling it meat. It’s as simple as it gets, meat may only come from livestock, and it would be unreasonable to call a plant-based product meat. Plant-based meat and dairy imitations are aimed at the vegan community, so why even call it meat or dairy if that is what they want to avoid? The target audiences for both are very different, therefore these should fall into different categories, and not be marketed as the same product with minor changes.