Republicans are on a quest to ban lab-grown meat
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Republican-led U.S. states are looking to ban lab-grown chicken, pork and other proteins cultivated from animal cells, branding it part of a woke agenda that threatens traditional farming.
Lawmakers in states including Alabama, Arizona, Florida and Tennessee have moved to target cell-cultivated meat products — even though they are still barely on the market in the United States.
Cultivated chicken last year became the first such product to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, with a multiyear review concluding that lab-grown meat made by two companies was safe for sale, but it is still only available at a handful of restaurants.
Those that attempt to sell lab-grown meat in Alabama or Arizona could soon face jail time or hefty fines as Republicans attempt to block what some have called a “war on our ranching.” More than a dozen states have regulated the use of the word “meat” on the products.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said that lab-grown meat is part of a “whole ideological agenda,” that blames agriculture workers for global warming, saying: “We’re not going to do that fake meat. That doesn’t work.”
Meanwhile, Democrat legislators in Arizona have argued that these bills go too far in restricting consumer choice and that the decision to buy cultivated meat should be up to consumers.
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Advocates of lab-grown meat say it’s safer, but researchers say health impact still unknown
Researchers into lab-grown meat — which is made by taking animal stem cells and growing them in bioreactors — say the impact on human health is still unknown, even as the FDA has said it is safe to eat. But advocates say safety concerns are unfounded and that lab-grown meat is actually healthier, being far more likely to be free of disease or contamination from other pathogens.
“This bill would treat cultivated meat differently than traditional meat without any actual basis in the science and any actual basis in health and safety regulations,” a representative of the Good Food Institute, a think tank, told Mother Jones, speaking about the Alabama bill. A chief legal officer of a cultivated meat company told the Financial Times that the motivation behind the proposed bans was clearly “to protect a conventional industry that is important to the state.”
European countries also look to ban lab-grown meat over impact on farming
While the sale and distribution of lab-grown meat is not yet legal in Europe, Italian, French, and Austrian delegations to the European Union’s agricultural and fisheries council have claimed it threatens the “very heart of the European farming model.” Italy has imposed a ban with a fine of €60,000 for violations, with legislators arguing that the ban “[safeguards] our food, our system of nutrition, by maintaining the relationship between food, land and human labor that we have enjoyed for millennia.”
Politico reported that the recent farmer protests across Europe have pushed the EU to scrap “diversified protein intake” as part of its key climate proposals to reduce emissions by 2040. Reducing the environmental impact of beef production and upscaling lab-grown meat technology will “require a lot of political will,” which is in “short supply,” The Conversation noted.
Lab-grown meat production has taken off in China
China, meanwhile, has embraced technologically created animal products, releasing a five-year agricultural plan that included “future foods” such as lab-grown meat and plant-based eggs. One food-technology CEO described the plan to TIME as “one of — if not the most — important policy actions in the history of alternative proteins” that will fuel a “broader consumer acceptance of these products,” Lab-grown meat is often too expensive to be competitive, but companies such as Shanghai-based CellX have pledged to construct new commercial production facilities which could reduce the price to a tenth of the current $100 per pound.
The chief executive of Better Meat, an alternative proteins company in California, suggested the United States may fall behind: “People in the national security field are now starting to wonder, ‘are we going to allow Asia to win the future of food technology?’” he said.
