This European Citizen’s Initiative requests that packaging on all food products should include mandatory labelling to indicate whether products are Meat/Vegetarian/Vegan. This will help to “Inform Choice” for consumers across Europe.

Sign the LabelVeg petition

Vegan, Vegetarian and Flexitarian lifestyle choices are beneficial to human health, reduce the impact on the Environment and help to protect Animal Welfare. There are many reasons why people might chose to reduce their consumption of animal products; ethical, environmental, religious and health – better food labelling will help people to make informed choices about their diet and lifestyle.

Within the European Union there are 24 official languages, manufacturers can normally only fit a few languages onto their products. The EU allows free movement of people, goods and services, but travelling presents complications for vegetarians/vegans. Identifying suitable food products in foreign languages proves a challenge for vegan/vegetarians when travelling in the EU, especially in the instance of ambiguous ingredients, that could either be plant or animal based.

Furthermore, there remains some misconceptions surrounding the distinction between Vegetarianism and Veganism itself. Some quick and notable examples being; honey, anything that contains gelatin, and certain beers that are filtered with animal parts.

To clear up any ambiguity and make food identification easier, we are proposing that food companies additionally, by law, label their products with 1 of 3 simple pictorial symbols:

• Not Vegetarian – contains animal parts and/or byproducts.

• Vegetarian – contains no part of the body of a living or dead animal.

• Vegan – is 100% plant based.

A precedent of this proposal can be found in India where food products are labelled with a symbol indicating “Non-Vegetarian/Vegetarian”.

If you agree that better food labelling would help to Inform Choice for consumers across Europe, please support our efforts to unifying food labelling, by signing the LabelVeg ECI petition.