2mo ago

Vegan drink Oatly can’t call itself ‘milk’, judges rule

www.telegraph.co.uk Vegan drink Oatly can’t call itself ‘milk’, judges rule

The Swedish plant-based company has been in a long-running legal battle with Dairy UK, the trade body for Britain’s dairy industry

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.

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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"

Feeling a bit insecure are you, dairy industry?
- They see younger generations using less milk and this is their tantrum.
  Meat industry does this too, but aren't as successful most of the time.
  
  They see younger generations moving away from dairy, and claim it's because non-dairy stole the words.
  When in my case at least, it only took a week milk-free to realise that having mild discomfort in your stomach all the time isn't normal.
  And that drinking MOMA instead left me feeling lighter and happier.

Milk of Magnesia has been getting away with it for decades.
- And coconut milk. We now have to call that "non-mammary coconut secretion"?
- Hand cream. Shea butter.
- Milk of the poppy is ancient as fuck no?
  
  I thought George RR Martin invented the phrase "milk of the poppy" to describe apine/opium in his ASOIAF series. Never crossed my mind that he might have lifted it from a history textbook.

I find this whole "it's not milk if it's not dairy" argument really hard to take in good faith.
I'm not an expert at all, but when I've heard people talk about these kind of 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.
  
  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."
  
  Yeah there are idiots, but what's the harm? They may be shocked to find there's 0 dairy, but how does that impact them? The nutrition info is on the label, as is the ingredients.
  
  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.
  
  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.

In 2019, Oatly applied to trademark the phrase “Post Milk Generation” but this was rejected by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in January last year after ruling that its use of the term “milk” was “deceptive”.
But this trademark is clearly them establishing themselves as not-milk and plenty of vegan products term themselves like this ("No Steak Pie") without issue, it's only dairy products that this ridiculous standard applied to them. Guess I'll just continue to enjoy the two bottles of oat 'drink' I have in my fridge.
To be honest I do think calling it “milk” lets them inflate the price when it is essentially porridge water.
Most good oat milks will have stabilisers and vitamins (B12 especially) added to them vs if you just made some at home.
- But this trademark is clearly them establishing themselves as not-milk and plenty of vegan products term themselves like this (“No Steak Pie”) without issue, it’s only dairy products that this ridiculous standard applied to them.
  I Can't Believe It's Not Butter seem to have no bother. Perhaps it's just Big Milk at work.
  
  I'd completely forgot about them tbh. You also see it a lot with cheese alternatives, even though they broadly fucking suck so I don't know why the cheese industry even bothers.
  
  Now I want to make an oil-based spread and call it "The Product In This Container Is Absolutely Not Butter" and see how it sells.

RIP coconut milk.
Funny that before oats and soy started gaining in popularity they had no problems with coconut milk.
- And milk of magnesia!
- 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.
- I like coconut milk as although milk, it makes for great mixers!
- They didn't? Or it just wasn't as common to voice it?

Easy enough, go with "oat mealk"

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)!
- Malk, now with vitamin R!
  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.
  
  Its real

This is karma for saying it works in tea.
- The barista grade stuff works pretty well in builders tea, honestly.
  You just have to get in the habit of shaking the carton.
  
  Oatly oat cream is a staple in my fridge at this point. It's basically better than cream (or milk if diluted) in many recipes because it's more heat resistant and flavour neutral.
- oaty tea eh? sounds a bit over the top to me.
- Honestly prefer it to milk in tea. I still use milk at home since I can’t be arsed to have fancy milk for porridge and tea only but at the office I’ll go for the oat milk by preference.

This is why I think the soy milk brand Silk is a brilliant product name.
- Wait for the courts to rule silk is only “excretions from the salivary glands of worms”.
- 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.
  
  🐷
- Now we just need a non-dairy whey-fortified milk alternative to call itself Milky Whey

That ship has sailed, Milk boys. Consumers call it oat milk and that’s not changing.

I love me some porridge water. Especially a porridge water latte.
You know what, I have zero problem calling it that, own it oatly! :D
- Porridge is different. It’s been cooked which crosslinks the starch molecules. Oat milk isn’t porridge water… it’s different down at the molecular level. Believe me, I made this mistake when ‘cooking’ up a batch, sorry, that should have been ‘cocking’
- Sadly, they'll probably call it 'Nilk' or something lazy like that
  
  MALK. Fuck, that was a Simpson's joke and when I was searching for an image I found this: https://www.heb.com/product-detail/malk-original-organic-oat-milk/1954842
- I would go with cereal water. It's what it is, and something it can be used for.

also, unrelated, there is no such thing as boneless wings, no matter what the ohio supreme court says
- Whike its not what they do.
  If you take a wing scrape all the flesh etc off.
  And throw away the bone. The remainder would def be a boneless wing.
  So there real lie is the idea its only wing meat not all the crappy meat mashed together.

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.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3njBw0G6k
- It's weird how much they love UHT milk on the continent. If you get a Starbucks in France (not sure why you would) then it'll be that UHT shite.

And what about the word “milking”? Is it legal to use when you are not talking about mammaries?

“thin gruel” just doesn’t have the right ring to it
- But it gives you an excuse to say “please, sir, may I have some more”.
- It just needs a bit of snazzy marketing.
  Just call it Ultragruel or Oatfuel and write "PROTEIN" on it in big letters.
  
  Actually, now I think about it, that only covers one section of the market.
  You should also release exactly the same product with with different packaging a few times:
  One with an off-brand Mr T character mascot, called "I Pity The Gruel".
  One called "Bilk : Better than Milk".
  That's a few shelves of supermarkets covered with selling the same thing. I'm sure you can cover some more with a few like "Barista Supreme: Oat-based Cream", "Oat Water", "Oat Juice" and simply "Oat-based Drink". Maybe even "Oat Blood", for Goths and "My dad was a gruelmaker" for Keir Starmer fans.
- Minor Figures oat milk is my favourite. Try some different brands. You’ve been given a bad one… was it cheap?

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.

I love porridge water.

Yoohoo is chocolate "drink" not "milk" either, this tracks.

Taco bell calls its beef-like offering "beefy", like a "beefy 5 layer burrito".
I'd have some Oat Milky.

Nothing like a nice glass of oat juice

I just call these oatly

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.

This is stupid on the surface, BUT “milk” in some jurisdictions is protected with legal standards. This prevents watering down or other issues.
I am not familiar with the UK, so I don’t know if this is applicable.
In the US, “ice cream” is protected and has to meet standards, otherwise it is called a “frozen dairy dessert”.
Additionally, in the US we recently had a massive butter recall from Costco because it did not label “dairy” as an allergen. Common sense indicates butter contains milk, HOWEVER, these allergen labels are the law and the allergens feed into downstream items. IE, if you use the butter to make brownies, then the brownies must be labeled. If you automate this process or whatever, you could miss this, due to it not being labeled correctly.
- While oat milk is relatively new, almond milk and soya milk are older than the legal protections the milk industry is trying to use. Almond milk has been almond milk for near enough a thousand years, soya milk is close to twice as old. Basically the word milk hasn't referred exclusively to mammal milk for as long as the word milk has existed.
  
  Also, tinned coconut milk is actually labelled coconut milk just fine without a problem.
  I wonder how many people might be be put off dairy, even if it's just for a moment before putting it out their mind, if all dairy products were labelled mammary secretions.
- I’m not sure (but happy to be corrected) that there is a legal standard definition of what constitutes milk. There was a documentary on Radio 4 a few years ago that asked “What is milk?” and found that - in UK and Europe - it couldn’t be answered (other than it had some cow involvement somewhere). Some pateurised “milks” had barely any actual milk. From what I remember it was the lobbying of the dairy industry that prevented a standard definition.
  
  other than it had some cow involvement somewhere
  Nope! Goat milk is common, so is human (though not commonly sold). My answer would be "mammal tit juice" but the UK seems to have summed it up nicely above with "mammary secretions" as well.
- Yeah, on the surface, it looks like evil cow farming lobbyists trying to force the competition to use a stupid name.
  But on the other hand, without a protected name, what stops corporations from lacing their milk with 20% oat milk and hiding it in the ingredient list to save cost?
  
  I'd buy that. If you want to replace 20% of my animal product with plants and can do an ok job I'm down.
  As long as it's labeled properly and you don't have to do anything crazy, it's at the very least something I'll try.
  
  Well, nut and grain milk are much more costly, so I doubt that
- your reasoning behind the law and it's purpose is spot on, I think.

I love dairy milk, especially and exclusively UHT Milk. But fuck the dairy industry so much.

Oatmilk is not good stuff.

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.

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