Regulatory gaps and instabile definitons: normalisation of the terms vegan and vegetarian by private certification bodies to protect consumers

Abstract

This study aims to provide a general overview of the state of vegan and vegetarian terminology in the Italian and European regulatory context; and provide descriptive terminological cards about certifications and trademarks for facilitating communication between institutions and consumers. The legal vacuum in the field of veganism and vegetarianism favoured the creation of certifications and trademarks that are granted to companies and/or products upon compliance with a product specification, whose requirements may, however, vary from case to case. Linguistically, this has resulted in a spread of misleading definitions of vegan and vegetarian. Therefore, the study is divided into three steps: firstly, the concepts of trademark, certification and product specification are defined then, common and distinctive features of descriptions in production specifications in Italian, English and French are identified and discussed; finally, terminological cards defining these concepts are drawn up and uploaded to the online multilingual database www.definire.eu.