France will become the first European Union country to ban the use of words like "steak" and "sausage" from being applied to plant-based food, according to an official decree published recently. The ban, which was originally agreed to in 2020, will go into effect in October.

"It will not be possible to use sector-specific terminology traditionally associated with meat and fish to designate products that do not belong to the animal world and which, in essence, are not comparable," the official decree reads.

The regulation only applies to products made in France, and the country's largest farm lobby FNSEA said it did not go far enough as it left the door open to imports. It said that similar laws should be enacted "at the European level," but the EU rejected a similar proposal in 2020.