Very few in the plant juice dairy substitute industry want to go without mentioning milk but they are in a legal and logical pickle; they simultaneously contend that no one is deceived into thinking their products are milk while also claiming it is absolutely essential to their business that they be able to use the word milk in their marketing.
Having never watched any of them milk an almond or a soybean or a kernel of rice, I can't say how close their process is to actual milking but I am skeptical. However, dairy farming also has its own problems with honesty, as a lawsuit against Tillamook hopes to show. An Animal Legal Defense Fund lawsuit in Oregon says they are being deceptive, perhaps like the plant juice trade groups and companies they represent.
Well, they aren't, at least not to that degree. If they were they would sell real milk properly named Vegan Milk or Almond Flavo-Milk, even though it was neither.
Just because no one really believes this handful of cows generates $800 million in sales doesn't mean you can say it.
What got the lawsuit going was Tillamook ads claiming they are "taking on the flawed industrialized food system" even though they are, the lawsuit claims, the "embodiment of industrialized dairy."
One farm alone that they source from has 32,000 cows and the vegan activists behind the lawsuit are exploiting that giant organization to state they are "industrialized food", whatever that means. It's all just nonsense marketing. Only 0.4% of farms pay estate taxes and over 95 percent of all farms in the U.S. are family run. Half of those farms make less than $10,000 a year in revenue, so they are basically paying for the taxes on their land. Where are these omnipresent industrialized farms Tillamook says they oppose? They may be getting poisoned by their own deceptive venom.
Will lawyers for dairy be able to simultaneously argue that their First Amendment right to market is sacrosanct while plant juice companies do not have that same right?
They will try. Pleading The Alternative is part of British Common Law, and the story goes it involved a cow. A farmer was accused of stealing a cow and the simultaneous argument was he never took the cow, he gave the cow back, and the cow was his anyway.
Like with Velveeta not being able to call itself cheese, if alternative companies break open FDA and FTC law on this, the vegans won't have a hoof to stand on. It will be open season on the American public by marketing groups.
