tubes and discs

I remember this discussion happening once before — that vegetarian or vegan sausages and burgers should not be referred to using these basic terms but rather described as tubes and discs. It has all come up again because the EU has voted 355-247 against meat-related terms being used for plant-based products.

Enter the hero of the hour, Paul McCartney, who called for the ban to be dropped.  Paul says:

‘To stipulate that burgers and sausages are “plant-based”, “vegetarian” or “vegan” should be enough for sensible people to understand what they eating.’  Paul is keen to defend Linda McCartney’s products because he feels, I think rightly, that sales would drop if they had to be marketed as’tubes’ and ‘discs’.  And that this would turn people off vegetarian products at the moment when it is important that we stop eating so much meat.

Even though the UK is no longer in the EU, their markets are inextricably linked so a ban in Europe would affect trade from the UK.  In Australia we are probably unaffected by the EU ban and can proceed on to expand our notion of what a sausage is, and what a burger might be, to encompass plant-based fillings.