ActiveRecord::Errors best practices?

I'm currently reviewing some old code from Rails 1.x times and found this:

  ActiveRecord::Errors.default_error_messages = {     :inclusion => "inclusion|",     :exclusion => "exclusion|",     :invalid => "invalid|",     :confirmation => "confirmation|",     :accepted => "accepted|",     :empty => "empty|",     :too_long => "too_long|",     :too_short => "too_short|",     :wrong_length => "wrong_length|",     :taken => "taken|",     :not_a_number => "not_a_number|",   }

Used on controller code to check if a specific error happens, like this:

if @user.errors.on("email").to_s.include? "taken|"   ... end

Are there better practices for doing this?