For the proponents of meat-labeling laws, the laws are sound as a matter of policy—geared towards protecting consumers from deceptive products, including the possibility of accidentally purchasing an alternative product during a quick run to the grocery store. They fear alternative products may be misleading and potentially harmful to consumers. The meat-labeling laws themselves, however, have also been widely criticized as protectionist in favor of producers of conventional meat products. They have also been said to impede innovation in discouraging the production of alternatives to meat from animals, which must, of course, be killed for their meat. In fact, some critics reject the proposition that a reasonably consumer could be misled as to product content by terms such as “black bean burger” or “tofu sausage.” Rather, critics believe that such branding is not misleading—and that an average consumer would understand, for example, that a “tofu sausage” is made of tofu and not animal meat—and that a state therefore could not constitutionally prohibit the existing labeling, which some defend as protected, accurate commercial speech identifying the products as other types of “meat.” This debate is even thornier with respect to calls to restrict labeling of cell-cultured meat as “meat,” despite the fact that meat might be identical to the meat from slaughtered animals, just not a product from an animal that was killed for its meat.

To this end, one state ACLU has decried labeling laws as unconstitutional “label censorship” which imperils already clear and truthful labeling, actually making it harder for consumers to identify the products they want to buy. For example, the ACLU has called out that plant-based meat products simply use figurative language to communicate information regarding meatless products—the same way that “peanut butter” is identified as a “butter” despite the fact that it is not a dairy product.  In a sense, then, the messaging is already clear, and matters could become simply more confusing if producers are not permitted to label their products in a manner that consumers can quickly and accurately understand. This explanation raises the possibility that states are effectively precluding commercial parties from properly and truthfully labeling their goods for sale, raising the specter of a constitutional issue. And these concerns are redoubled where participants in the stream of commerce could face unclear—and potentially unconstitutional on vagueness grounds—criminal penalties for labeling-law violations.