I’ll probably stick to asking for oat milk instead of “porridge water” or whatever the new mandated name will be. To be honest I do think calling it “milk” lets them inflate the price when it is essentially porridge water.
Taco bell calls its beef-like offering “beefy”, like a “beefy 5 layer burrito”.
I’d have some Oat Milky.
I don’t like oat milk but it’s more milk-like than skimmed UHT (bleurgh…). But I guess the line had to get drawn somewhere…
Shout out to how much UHT ruins milk.
some places called nut-based milk “mylk” to avoid this legal complication.
they could probably start doing that.
It’s not MILK (milk), it’s MlLK™ (mllk)!
Kidding aside, dairy companies are embarrassing themselves. Everyone I’ve ever met just calls it oat/soy/almond/whatever milk anyway, regardless what’s written on the package, even if they don’t drink it.
This is why I think the soy milk brand Silk is a brilliant product name.
Monsoon ain’t gonna like that! Mind you, the Met Office are eyeing them up, once they get past the class action for trying to own human contact lol
Oilk?
Oalk.
🐷
Wait for the courts to rule silk is only “excretions from the salivary glands of worms”.
Now we just need a non-dairy whey-fortified milk alternative to call itself Milky Whey
I find this whole “it’s not milk if it’s not dairy” argument really hard ti take in good faith.
I’m not an expert at all, but when I’ve heard people talk about these kind if decisions, it sounds like it’s normally meant to come down to consumer benefits.
Who’s gaining here (aside from dairy lobbies)? I don’t think there’s any reasonable argument that UK citizens are confused by the term “oat milk”, and buying it because they were tricked into thinking it was a dairy product.
I know a person who thought that the “plant milks” are flavours of regular milk until it was explained to them. Like chocolate milk.
All people are at least a little stupid. We’re all stupid in our own way. Something that seems obvious to you and I may seem mind-boggling to someone else.
Yeah there are idiots, but what’s the harm? They may be shocked to find there’s 0 dairy, but his does that impact them? The nutrition info is on the label, as is the ingredients.
Law has a concept of the average idiot (cannot remember the real term). When applying confusion as a risk. Honestly milk has been used so much in English. (Coconutsand other things) I think that would fail.
I ANAL though.
Its more likely that oat milk is intentionally selling as a mamory milk alternative. That was made as an argument. But it is clearly a biased response from the court.
Tbf especially with “almond milk” I could 100% see that. Honestly it’s more logical than “they squeeze all the juice out of the almonds” (I have no idea the process for making almond milk lmao ykwim), someone seeing it and saying “Almonds huh? Crazy, what flavor will they think of next? I’d have chosen hazelnut” is really not that big of a jump.
Honestly I’m more surprised I didn’t think that, but iirc I was informed about it through a vegan friend before I even saw it in the store.
Would have been hilarious if big dairy brought them into the trial as an “expert witness”.
“Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, I am a real life strawman.”
Courts don’t define words, people and dictionaries do. And this was in the telegraph which means it BS anyway. Ignore and don’t click
Laws and consumer protection agencies can and do define words in the context of consumer goods.
I just call these oatly
Dairy UK had argued that it was unlawful to use “milk” in a trademark relating to “products that are not mammary secretions”.
I think consumers need to argue that all milk should be accurately labelled as “mammary secretions”
I looked into the high price of plant milks. It’s essentially because the industry is new and still investing in R&D and new factories. The dairy industry has very little innovation now, just court cases.
Don’t forget the dairy industry takes lots of health subsidies in many countries too.
And what about the word “milking”? Is it legal to use when you are not talking about mammaries?
The trade mark isn’t worded like they’re saying they’re milk.
The term “post milk” makes me think “better than milk” which is accurate.
I love porridge water.
Yoohoo is chocolate “drink” not “milk” either, this tracks.
RIP coconut milk.
Funny that before oats and soy started gaining in popularity they had no problems with coconut milk.
Yeah. And it is clear the court is not being unbiased. Given your comment.
It seems likely that parliment could be convinced to rule on this with enough negativity. No legal restrictions exist on the name. The dairy industry has no trademark or claim of unique use or confusion.
Parliment has the right to rule against this by act. if they agree. IE basically passing a law restricting courts from bias against long used language terminology.
Honestly it would require folks to write to MPs pointing out the stupidity ans bias. But enough may be annoyed by this that such a movement can be formed.
And milk of magnesia!
