Professor Danny Friedmann’s Chapter ‘Innovative Foods with Transparent Labels that Will Have the Next Pandemic for Breakfast’ was published in ‘Law and Economics of The Coronavirus Crisis’, edited by Professors Klaus Mathis (Faculty of Law, University of Lucerne) and Avishalom Tor (Law School of the University of Notre Dame).
Professor Friedmann holds that continued factory farming makes a new viral pandemic ineluctable. Plant-based and cell-cultured food (together “innovative food”) producers use animal-based food names to signal a similar function, use, and taste, but without the negative externalities of the animal-based foods in regard to health, sustainability and ethicality. In the US and EU, the market share of animal-based products is shrinking.
The animal-based food producers in the US have insisted on “Truth in Labeling” measures to exclude innovative foods from using animal-based food names, even though empirical research demonstrates that it does not lead to consumer confusion. The European Parliament has approved Amendment 171 to Regulation (EU) No. 1308/2013 to extend the dairy ban, even though it conflicts with the policy goals in the Farm to Fork Strategy to transition to a system of health, sustainability, clear information, and the implied goal of ethicality.
You can read Professor Friedmann’s pre-publication article here:Innovative Foods with Transparent Labels that Will Have the Next Pandemic for Breakfast (June 28, 2021) in LAW AND ECONOMICS OF THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS, Klaus Mathis and Avishalom Tor, eds. (Springer, 2022) 315-370.
