Another state law forcing plant-based products to include packaging disclaimers that their products do not actually contain meat has been struck down by the courts – this time in Texas.
On Jan. 28, the US District Court for the Western District of Texas granted a motion for summary judgment, effectively shutting down a Texas law requiring products like veggie bacon and Tofurkey to add the packaging disclaimers.
The state law, signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May 2023, was challenged by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) on behalf of Tofurkey and the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA).
The decision to grant summary judgment, wherein a case is decided by a judge without going to a full trial, follows similar court decisions blocking plant-based product labeling laws in Arkansas and Louisiana in 2022.
Courts also have ruled against laws in Oklahoma and Missouri, saying the laws did not apply to plant-based food manufacturers, according to ALDF.
Unconstitutional, not misleading
District Judge Robert Pitman noted in the ruling that the defendants in the case failed to show that marketing terms like veggie burgers or veggie bacon are misleading to the public.
“Other courts have held that labels which include conventional animal food terms alongside terms that convey the plant-based nature of the product are not misleading and do not cause consumer confusion,” he said, citing the 2022 Arkansas case, Turtle Island Foods SPC v. Soman, which was ruled unconstitutional.
He noted in the ruling that the plaintiffs surveyed Texas residents, asking them to identify the contents of plant-based and conventional meat products by reviewing the labels. Respondents accurately identified meatless products with 96% accuracy and animal-based products with 97% accuracy.
“That rate of accuracy was not higher where the meatless products had a label that was altered to be in accordance with [the state law] SB 664,” Pitman wrote. “In fact, the study detected a statistically significant ‘increase in confusion for Beyond Meat Ground Beef when the label was modified’ in the ways SB 664 requires.”
Pitman also noted that the court “finds no material dispute of the fact that SB 664 violates the First Amendment [of the US Constitution].”
He added that the state failed to provide evidence that marketing caused confusion and that it had no knowledge of “ever having received a complaint” about confusion over plant-based meat products.
Handout to Texas meat purveyors?
The Animal Legal Defense Fund lauded the court decision and said the state law was “designed to protect Texas animal producers from competition rather than Texas consumers from nonexistent confusion.”
“Instead of making it easier for shoppers to purchase the food items they want, Texas attempted to manipulate the market in favor of animal products by applying a different set of rules for plant-based meat options, making it more challenging and costly for these foods to reach consumers in the state,” said Michael Swistara, staff attorney at ALDF. “The court’s ruling rightfully levels the playing field and follows the trend of similar laws being struck down or read to be unenforceable against plant-based producers. It is not only a win for plant-based producers, but also consumers who are seeking foods that meet their personal needs and preferences, and align with their values.”
Texas “shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in the marketplace,” said Madeline Cohen, associate director, regulatory affairs at the Good Food Institute.
“As the court recognized, consumers have never been confused by plant-based meat labels, and this patronizing law was an attempt to solve a problem that didn’t exist – at the expense of consumer choice, free speech and the free market,” Cohen added.
Got plant-based milk?
A similar battle is playing out over plant-based versions of milk.
The FDA has been considering tightening labeling requirements for plant-based products, but a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing in late 2024 revealed that regulators are unlikely to ban use of the word milk for plant-based products.
FDA brought the issue to the forefront in 2023, when it issued a draft guidance that recommended that plant-based milk products include front-of-package labeling that compares the product’s nutritional value to milk’s.
The FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at the time, Jim Jones, said in the committee hearing that “consumers are not misled by using terms such as soy milk or oat milk.”
“They understand that is not milk,” Jones said in 2024. “They are purposely seeking such products because they are not milk.”
While consumers might largely understand the difference between plant-based and traditional milk, FDA found there was more confusion about the nutritional value between the two products.
The debate continues in Congress with the bipartisan Dairy Pride Act, which was released in mid-2025,
