Starting in October 2025, Switzerland will ban the use of names such as “chicken” or “pork” for 100% plant-based products. This was established by the Federal Court of Zurich, requiring a revision of labels to avoid potential risks of deception towards consumers.
The ruling marks a new chapter in the battle over so-called meat sounding designations — that is, the use of terms traditionally associated with meat to identify products that contain none.
The case originated from an appeal by the Ministry of the Interior against the Zurich-based company Planted Foods, known for its plant-based substitutes marketed as “planted chicken.”
The crux of the dispute is consumer protection. According to the appellant, a product labelled “chicken” — even if specified as “vegan” or “plant-based” — could mislead consumers.
At first instance, the Zurich Administrative Court had ruled in favour of the company, holding that the addition of the qualifiers “vegan” or “plant-based” was sufficient to ensure transparency and protect the consumer, but the Federal Court of Zurich overturned that decision.
According to the judges, the direct reference to an animal — in this case chicken — even when accompanied by qualifiers such as “vegan” or “plant-based“ — can be misleading to the consumer.
According to media reports, the ruling states that:
“A plant-based product that references the term ‘chicken’ and contains no meat constitutes deception.”
The decision is based on the interpretation of Article 18 of the Swiss Federal Act on Foodstuffs (LDerr), which prohibits any potentially misleading indication. In particular, paragraph 3 of Article 18 reads:
“Considered misleading in particular are presentations, descriptions, packaging and advertising liable to create in the consumer false impressions about the manufacture, composition, quality, method of production, shelf life, country of production, origin of raw materials or components, special effects or special value of the product.”
However, the ruling does not prohibit the use of terms that describe the shape or function of the product — for example: steak, sausage, burger, cutlet (precisely the meat sounding designations) — provided it is clear that their composition is plant-based.
This position of the Swiss Court comes as no surprise and is substantially in line with what was established by a 2024 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which we have already discussed here.
Although Switzerland is not part of the EU, on many matters it tends to follow the EU’s direction.
The CJEU in its 2024 ruling indeed clarified that Member States may not introduce additional restrictions on the use of “terms from the butchery, charcuterie and fishery sectors to designate, market or promote food products containing plant proteins in substitution for proteins of animal origin, including in their entirety”.
It is therefore not possible to prohibit the use of the customary name which, pursuant to Art. 2.2 letter O of Regulation No. 1169/2011, is defined as “a name that is accepted as the name of the food by consumers of the Member State in which that food is sold, without needing further explanation”.
Typical examples of customary names are precisely steak, cutlet, burger, frankfurter, bresaola, and so on.
In this context, Italian Law No. 172/2023, which prohibits the use of customary names used for animal products for plant-based products and provides for fines of up to €60,000, is shaping up as an increasingly isolated case in Europe.
While the rulings we have discussed formally aim to protect the consumer — albeit in a paternalistic manner that is not up to date with current consumer awareness — Italian legislation has as its stated objective the protection of the livestock supply chain and the national agri-food heritage.
What emerges is a European landscape increasingly open to the legitimacy of using meat sounding designations, also because the market for plant-based products is growing strongly and with it the quality of those products continues to improve.
Certainly the Federal Court of Zurich’s ruling could have been bolder and sent a more forward-looking signal, but at the same time — also from the perspective of regulatory harmonisation at the European level — it strengthens the jurisprudential trend moving in the direction of weakening the ban on “meat sounding” designations for plant-based products.
