There are currently no grocery stores or restaurants in the United States that serve lab-grown beef. It never will be, if certain lawmakers have their way.
Florida and Arizona outlawed the sale of farmed meat and seafood earlier this month. Cultivated meat and seafood are produced using animal cells. In Iowa, a bill banning the purchase of lab-grown beef by schools was signed by the governor. Lawmakers at the federal level are also trying to limit it.
How far these attempts will go is unknown. A few corporations that deal with grown meat have said that they are thinking about taking legal action, while several states, like Tennessee, have rejected proposed restrictions because politicians claimed they would limit consumers’ options.
Nevertheless, it’s a discouraging way to cap off a year that began very optimistically for the farmed meat sector.
In June 2023, the United States authorized the first-ever sale of lab-grown meat, enabling two California firms, Good Meat and Upside Foods, to market created chicken. The items were momentarily added to the menus of two upscale American restaurants. A few enterprises that raised meat started increasing their output. A Good Meat product was introduced for sale at a Singaporean supermarket.
However, politicians soon started applying the brakes. Acts that would outlaw farmed meat have been introduced in seven states, according to Kim Tyrrell, associate director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Republican senators from South Dakota and Montana, Jon Tester and Mike Round, filed a measure in the U.S. Senate in January that would outlaw the use of lab-grown meat in school lunch programs.
The retaliation is not limited to Americans. In late last year, Italy outlawed the sale of meat made in labs. A bill to outlaw it has also been introduced by French politicians.
The resistance is occurring despite the fact that because they are so expensive to produce, lab-grown meat and fish are still a long way from making a significant impact on the market. Fertilized eggs, living animal cells, or storage banks are used to grow produced goods in steel tanks. Special combinations of water, sugar, lipids, and vitamins are supplied to the cells. They are shaped into cutlets, nuggets, and various shapes after they have grown.
Businesses have been concentrating a lot on increasing output to save expenses and obtaining government approval to market their goods. They’re currently attempting to determine how to react to the state prohibitions as well. In order to “tell politicians to stop policing your plate,” Upside Foods created a Change.org petition.
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Tom Rossmeissl, the head of worldwide marketing at Good Meat, remarked, “It’s unfortunate that they are closing the door before we even get out of the gate.” According to him, the business is thinking about its legal alternatives.
Farmers and consumers are the targets of the restrictions’ proponents. They claim that only around ten years have passed since the invention of farmed beef, and they are worried about its safety.
Alabama’s bill’s Republican state senator Jack Williams said via email to The Associated Press, “We have no idea what is in this stuff or how it will affect us. We want to know what we are eating.” “Meat is not grown in a petri dish by scientists; it is raised by dedicated farmers and ranchers.”
However, individuals in the farmed meat sector assert that before being put on the market, their goods must pass stringent government safety inspections. They claim that their fledgling company is focused on finding ways to meet the world’s expanding need for protein rather than seeking to replace meat.
According to Rossmeissl, there are 45 companies in the U.S. leading the charge in the development of cultured meat and seafood, but things could change. For instance, an Israeli business was given the go-ahead to market the first steaks produced from farmed cattle in the world in January. China is also a big investor in meat produced in laboratories.
“We’re putting up barriers to something that could be really important to our economy and food security, which should be shocking and concerning to Americans,” he stated.
The Florida bill’s Republican author, state senator Jay Collins, pointed out that the proposal only forbids the production and distribution of meat cultivated in labs; it makes no mention of research. Collins stated that protecting Florida agriculture is his top priority, but safety is his main driving force.
“Let us not hastily replace anything,” he uttered. It’s a multibillion dollar sector. With the help of the cattle, beef, pig, poultry, and fish industries, we feed a huge number of people nationwide.
According to Rossmeissl, the meat business is attempting to avoid what occurred to the dairy industry when plant-based substitutes like oat milk were introduced. The United States Department of Agriculture and the Good Food Institute, an advocacy group for plant-based and grown food, report that 15% of milk sales in the United States last year were made of plant-based milk, an increase from roughly 6% a decade ago.
Producers of meat did support the prohibitions in Alabama and Florida. As the two governors signed the prohibitions into law, the heads of the cattlemen’s associations in those states—advocacy organizations for ranchers—were standing by them.
At the federal level, however, things get murkier because the meat business opposes laws that outlaw farmed goods. Some meat firms are attempting to create their own cultured meat, such as JBS Foods.
Sigrid Johannes, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s director of government affairs, stated, “We do not support the route of banning these outright.” “We’re not scared to compete in the market with these products.”
The Meat Institute, which advocates for large meat corporations such as Tyson, JBS, and others, forwarded a letter to Alabama lawmakers alerting them to the possibility that the state’s ban was unlawful due to federal law governing interstate trade and meat processing.
Despite traveling to Florida and Alabama to testify against the measures, the founders of Wildtype, a San Francisco-based firm that produces grown salmon, were unable to influence the outcome. Although they express hope that someone will take the prohibitions to court, they acknowledge that their small business is not equipped to fight that battle.
Co-founder of Wildtype Arye Elfenbein remarked, “We are David, and there is a gigantic Goliath on the other side of the aisle.”
AP Contributing writers were Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida.