SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – “Veggie” doesn’t mean chock-full of vegetables, Kellogg’s is arguing as it fights a lawsuit over the ingredients in its Morningstar Farms line of meat-less food products.
No, “veggie” signals to consumers the absence of meat, a Nov. 16 motion to dismiss says.
“Countless restaurants—from vegetarian-focused restaurants like Veggie Grill to mainstream chains like the Cheesecake Factory—sell ‘veggie burgers’ that include a wide range of ingredients, including beans, mushrooms, and brown rice,” the motion says.
“Indeed, there are thousands of recipes for veggie burgers that feature a limitless variety of plant-based ingredients. It is accordingly implausible that a reasonable consumer would interpret the phrase ‘veggie burger’ to mean that a meat substitute—let alone a packaged, frozen product like Kellogg’s Morningstar Farms products—consists primarily of vegetables as opposed to other plant-based ingredients.”
The lawsuit claims it is misleading to call Morningstar foods “veggie” because the predominant ingredients in all of them are grains and oils.
The first three ingredients in veggie dogs are water, wheat gluten and corn syrup solids, for example. The suit claims Kellogg’s is violating both federal food labeling laws and California Health and Safety Code.
Attorney Paul Joseph is pursuing the case on behalf of plaintiff Angela Kennard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He will have to pass the “reasonable consumer” test to keep his case alive, something the company argues he cannot.
“What a reasonable consumer would believe is that Kellogg’s Morningstar Farms products do not contain any meat—which is true,” the motion to dismiss says.
“As the Ninth Circuit has made clear, a plaintiff cannot simply ignore the ‘prevalent understanding’ of a labeling term and rely instead on her own idiosyncratic, unreasonable assumptions about the meaning of that term.
“Just as a reasonable consumer would not believe that ‘diet’ soft drinks promise weight loss or that soy milk comes from a cow, a reasonable consumer would not interpret the term ‘veggie burger’ to mean that a product consisted predominantly of vegetables.”