Famously, Jacob Rees-Mogg has never cooked in his life. But do not be surprised if this summer you see him on the news ordering a brace of carrots from a confused greengrocer before spatchcocking an aubergine and provocatively mincing an onion to snub the European parliament – which has announced plans to ban meat-free products from using any terminology commonly associated with meat. No more bean burgers, no more cauliflower steaks, no more seitan ribs.

MEPs will vote on the agricultural committee’s recommendations in May, urged on by the French socialist MEP Éric Andrieu, who insists: “People need to know what they are eating.” Similar laws exist in France and Missouri, and, at first glance, seem reasonable enough.

As a food writer, I support transparent labelling, particularly on restaurant menus, where I am occasionally stumped by descriptions that play fast and loose with the suggestion of meat. Last month, I was eating in a vegan cafe [name redacted to spare it attention from over-zealous trading standards officers], only to find that, despite a small, plant-based disclaimer on the menu, it was littered with free-floating references to bacon, chicken and shrimp. I had to double check with staff that, like the plainly explained “seitan ribs”, all the menu was still, in fact, vegan.

That is not ideal, no matter how tempting it is to use “pulled pork” rather than “pulled jackfruit” to sell your dishes. But it is also rare (most restaurants painstakingly explain meat-free dishes), and it was clarified in two seconds, without the need for European legislation.

The European court of justice already ruled, in 2017, on the more obvious area of confusion: the supermarket retail of non-dairy milks, cheeses and butters. They cannot be labelled as such. They must be clearly identified as vegan, dairy-free “Sheese” (as one brand has it). There is no danger of you putting the wrong pack in your basket.

Tofu steaks are less easily mistaken. No one will buy one thinking it is rare-breed Longhorn. No restaurant will attempt to sell you one for £24.

Not only is the timing of this bizarre (the planet is dying, partly due to an over-consumption of meat), but surely, in choosing to police the semantics of vegan food retail, Europe is on shaky ground. Who can define, historically or colloquially, what meat terms are? Who owns this language?

Steak is not a cut of meat. Not an animal. Not a synonym for beef. It derives from the Old Norse, steikja, meaning to roast on a spit. It is happenstance that steijk came to be associated with Vikings roasting beef (new Nordic cookery is all about roasting celeriac, instead), and, being pedantic, unless a restaurant spit-roasts its ribeyes, you could equally accuse it of misselling.

Similarly, not only have hamburgers never contained ham (the word is 19th-century US slang for a Hamburg-style minced beef steak), but, in trying to fence off “burger” for beef now, Europe is 50 years too late. In Britain, 1970s vegetarianism and, later, Linda McCartney’s ready-meals, popularised the concept that burgers and sausages could be made without beef or pork. Eating a falafel or beetroot burger is no stranger than eating one made out of chicken. No one in Europe is making a fuss about that.

Supporters of this European proposal insist it has arisen not owing to lobbying from Big Meat but from a desire for full transparency. If so, why is Europe not scrutinising meat products, too? There are plenty of meat burgers and sausages (essentially, a slurry of eyelids and arseholes), that barely warrant the name. Where is the legislation on sourcing, processing and minimum meat percentages in sausages or burgers?

Yet, if this law is enacted, could it be a weird blessing in disguise? The recent rise in veganism seems, at street level, to be dominated by an explosion in trashy vegan junk food, which, in my experience, is often terrible. Like the “fake-on” of yore, meat-free food that mimics meat is doomed to failure in persuading new recruits (ie me).~ It draws a false comparison with foods it will never match in flavour, and its physical resemblance to them only emphasises the absence of meat.

If meat-free eating is to gain widespread traction in the UK, we need to look, instead, at exploring cuisines with a long history of meat-free cooking (Gujarati, Ethiopian Orthodox Christian, Jamaican ital) and those regions (southern Europe, the Levant, Kerala), where a rich variety of meat-free dishes have evolved as a natural expression of the terroir. I regularly eat incredible vegan food but via Ottolenghi cookbooks, and not at seitan cheezburger joints, but at Liverpool’s ItalFresh or, in Leeds and Manchester, at Mayur Patel’s Bundobust.

Forcing veganism to rename its burgers and sausages as veggie discs and tempeh tubes would be ludicrous, but looking beyond vegan junk food? That is a great idea.

• Tony Naylor is a food writer