12 EU member states have supported a call for the European Commission to introduce protections on traditional animal-sourced food names so they cannot be used on plant-based food labels.

The delegation from the Czech Republic presented a paper on the issue at a meeting of agriculture ministers in the Council of the EU this week.

The Czech paper was supported by 11 other member states, including Ireland.

The document said that the food market in the EU is increasingly composed of products that consist only of plant-based ingredients and are similar in appearance, taste and consistency to products of animal origin.

These plant-based foods are very often labelled with the names belonging to meat, eggs, honey, fish, and products made from them.

However, the paper said that plant-based products differ substantially from food products of animal origin, particularly in terms of composition and nutritional value.

The Czech submission said that it is "essential" that foods which imitate, mimic or substitute foods of animal origin do not mislead the consumer by their labelling as to their true nature.

Protection of names is already in place for products for the dairy sector. However, no other protection of food names is in place at EU level for other animal-sourced products, and some member states are considering the introduction of reserved names for other food of animal origin at national level.

The member states involved in the paper are calling for "harmonisation of legal protection" to be provided on food names.

They are seeking a legislative proposal from the commission to protect the names of animal origin, providing them with similar protection that already exists for milk and dairy products.

The pressure on the commission to protect names of animal-sourced food has been welcomed by the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA).

ICMSA president Denis Drennan claimed that the inclusion of terms such a 'sausage' or 'burger' in vegetarian or vegan foods "was deliberate and cynical".

He said that the "hijakcing" of traditional meat and dairy terms "actually constitutes an admissions by the corporations involved that they were unable to convince consumers other than by such camouflage".

"Obviously, people are free to eat whatever they want but it is a matter of considerable irritation to farmers to see the very people and corporations who want to replace our naturally produced meat and dairy with their own non-meat and non-dairy products very deliberately using the terms that they know are generally understood to refer to traditional dairy and meat products," Drennan said.

The ICMSA president said it is "no longer tenable to allow non-dairy and non-meat products to advertise and promote themselves using terms and language associated with the traditional foods these vegetarian and vegan products are attempting to supplant".

"It’s self-evidently wrong that products that contain not a trace of meat are being sold as ‘sausage’ or ‘burger’ and being marketed in this disingenuous way. These corporations...are quite deliberately playing on people’s desire for healthy, traditional, meat-based foodstuffs while actually substituting real meal ingredients with cheaper and more processed vegetable and plant-derived elements," Drennan said.