Australia’s War Over Words
The red meat lobby wants to criminalise compassion at the checkout. We need your help to make sure that they don’t get away with it.
In a desperate move that resembles Goliath dobbing on David to Big Brother, the Australian red meat lobby has spit the dummy and secured a federal inquiry into the labelling of animal products.
As no other sector has done before, the red meat lobby has suggested it owns common English words and that consumers are being hoodwinked when they spend their hard-earned shopping money on anything other than their own products. The inquiry coincides with declining support for meat eating and increasing interest in plant-based products. Yet, rather than accepting competition as an inescapable element of business, the red meat lobby has brazenly taken their contempt for compassionate choices and the companies that service a growing sector of Australians to a disturbing and tyrannical new level.
Please join us and help stop the red meat lobby from securing a strangle-hold on the English language.
We have created a six-point list of some of the most important things the Committee should hear. Please use these to write a submission so that the voice of the vegan community can be heard and so industry doesn’t get to bend political will and shape Federal laws to fit their own agendas.
Six Points
The industry doesn’t own words.
The Australian Government explains that words or images that are “ordinarily used to indicate the kind, quality, quantity, intended purpose or value” cannot be trademarked.
Consumers aren’t confused by plant-based labelling.
Studies have proven that consumers aren’t confused by the packaging or labelling of plant-based products.
The lobby wants to hobble its competition.
The meat lobby is attacking its competitors because more and more consumers are adding ethics, animal welfare and the environment to their shopping budgets. As more Australians have added environmental and animal welfare issues to their grocery budget, meat-eating sits at close to its lowest point since 1996.
The future is plant-based.
Eating meat, particularly red meat, has serious impacts on health and the environment. It causes significant suffering and is hugely wasteful. For people, the planet and the animals - the future is plant-based.
It’s hypocritical and undemocratic.
The meat industry relies on myth and deception in their marketing and the inquiry is unfairly demanding one sector do what they refuse to - tell the truth.
Plant-based sales are rising rapidly.
The demand for plant-based alternatives to animal products is increasing dramatically. Demand grew by 50% in 2020 and revenue doubled in the same period. The lobby doesn't have a leg to stand on, it simply wants to cripple its competition.
Lodge a Submission
Submissions to the inquiry can be lodged until the 30th of July. Please click this link