Thursday, 10 March 2022

Plant-based food industry

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:52): (1811) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture, and it relates to the efforts currently underway to achieve truth in food labelling. I note the work being done by a Senate inquiry into meat definitions. With the rise and rise of veganism, and even its social precursor vegetarianism, Australia is witnessing movement within the food industry. Indeed it is a whole new segment of the market. That is a good thing. We celebrate choice. But new plant-based products need to find their own names and marketing strategies. Piggybacking off meat-based names and descriptors is hardly fair or respectful.

The red meat industry has spent many, many millions of dollars across the decades building its brand, building its market and educating consumers about its products. The naming and branding of these products have not happened by chance. Meat and dairy farmers are right to feel cranky that the new kids on the supermarket block, so to speak, have usurped much of that work and investment for the branding of their own vegan or plant-based products. But let us be straight: chickpeas are not chicken, soybeans are not sausages and legumes are not lamb. As Queensland senator Susan McDonald so aptly put it recently in an article in Stock & Land:

All we’re suggesting is that, like margarine makers did by choosing a name that didn’t contain butter, plant protein marketers come up with ways to promote their products without trading on animal names and imagery.

I am sure if the reverse argument was put, legume growers would be cranky for lamb farmers and marketers to be calling lamb chops ‘legumes’. In this way it is quite nonsensical. My question then to the minister is: what efforts has she made to support Victorian farmers of animal products and their argument for truth in food labelling? Equally what support is she giving farmers of plant-based products to help grow that important market and establish for itself its own product descriptors that do not trade off the parallel meat product they are trying to replicate in plant form?

The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mrs McArthur. I noticed last night and tonight that in your adjournment you asked a question. It should be an action.

Mrs McARTHUR: Would you like me to reword it?

The PRESIDENT: No, the minister will accept that.

Ms Tierney: I am all for talking to the animals, but I think it would be helpful to the minister if you did seek a specific action.

Mrs McARTHUR: The action I seek, then, is for the minister to establish what effort she has made to support Victorian farmers of animal products and their argument for truth in food labelling. The further action I seek is what support she is giving farmers of plant-based products to help grow that important market so it can establish for itself its own product descriptors that do not trade off the parallel meat product they are trying to replicate in plant form.