The branch, located in the Upper Hunter, wants to see a truth in labelling for meat similar to that achieved for country of origin.

At the recent state conference of the CWA the Merriwa branch put forward a motion calling for the enforcement of the Food Safety Standards of Australia and New Zealand for the use of the terms covered by "meat" and "meat products" as outlined in Standard 2.2.1[1], based on the following two definitions:

means the whole or part of the carcass of any of the following animals, if slaughtered other than in a wild state:

(i) buffalo, camel, cattle, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep;

any other animal permitted for human consumption under a law of a State, Territory or New Zealand.

Their motion was successfully passed at the conference with no dissenting comments.

"We want to take the emotion out of the argument and simply ensure the current standards are enforced when it comes to the description of meat," said branch president Penelope Fenley.

"Calling non-animal products meat is confusing and can cause issues for consumers as many of the non-animal products contain nut and soy ingredients which are high risk for allergies. "When it comes to iron meat has twice as much iron content when compared vegan and vegetarian products."

In a region with a large, although now somewhat diminished livestock industry due to the drought, Mrs Fenley said farmers need our support and this type of labelling was important.

"We are deceiving consumers if we call non-animal products meat - it is an simply as that," she said.

"You cannot under the Food Standards have a vegan meat pie because a meat pie must contain 25 per cent meat. "We want to see the regulators enforce the standards for meat across the food industry."

Also at the conference held in Albury the CWA expressed its support for the Raise the Rate campaign to increase Newstart and help people living in rural and regional Australia struggling to find paid work make ends meet.

CWAA President Tanya Cameron says, "We support the Raise the Rate campaign to increase Newstart and other allowances because an increase will strengthen our communities and help people get through tough times." "It is impossible to live on $40 a day in rural and regional Australia. You cannot run a car, pay the rent and buy groceries with such little money."