The US state legislatures are trying to stop the development of “lab grown” pork, tuna and other animal protein products. They’re taking a stand in opposition to a new food technology that is backed by investors like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.
Since the start of the year, Republicans have introduced legislation in at least seven different states to prohibit the sale or distribution of lab grown meat. This is a form edible protein that has been cultivated using animal cells.
The first product, cultivated chicken, was approved by the federal government last year for human consumption. It is only available at two restaurants in Washington and San Francisco that are Michelin-starred.
politicians have turned lab-grown beef into a hot button issue. Conservatives like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have used cultivated meat to attack the “woke” agenda of liberals. Some have linked it to vaccine concerns.
Bud Hulsey said, “Some people would like to eat insects with Bill Gates but not me”, at a subcommittee meeting on cultivated meat in March.
He said, in support of an cultivated meat ban: “I believe the Nuremberg Code was set up to ensure that you wouldn’t experiment on humans with new products or new experiments without testing and trying it and finding out what it could do.” “We came out of Covid with a shot that was a lot more problematic than anyone wanted to discuss.”
Florida’s Legislature sent a bill in March that would ban the sale of lab-grown beef in Florida to DeSantis who had said in February: “We will not do fake meat.” The bill is not going to work. A spokesperson for the Governor declined to comment.
Italy, whose right-wing government under Prime Minister Giorgia Melons introduced a law last year that banned the production lab-grown meat. The law could face legal challenges in the EU as Italy failed to follow EU single-market rules.
“Some people are trying to kill this baby at the cradle,” Paul Shapiro said, CEO of Better Meat in California, which produces alternative proteins. He added that other countries take the new industry seriously. China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs published a five-year plan in 2022 that included encouraging lab-grown beef.
Shapiro stated that “people in the national-security field are starting to wonder if we’re going to let Asia win the future food technology?”
Like in Italy, US opposition to cultivated meat is a combination of political messaging and protectionist domestic policies. Farmers and cattle ranchers have supported state bills that ban cultivated meat. The pork, corn and soybean industries in Iowa support legislation that includes a ban on cultivated animal meat.
Questions have also been raised about the similarity of lab-grown meat to conventional meat. In December, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization stated that “cell-based foods cannot be considered identical with animal-source food they eventually aim to replace due to differences of nutritional quality”.
The proposed state legislative bans are “surprising and shortsighted”, said Sean Edgett, chief legal officer of cultivated meat company .Sean Edgett is the chief legal officer at Upside Foods. One of two companies that won approval last year to sell lab-grown poultry.
These bills are “very transparent in their motivations, which is to safeguard a traditional industry that is very important for the state. Edgett stated that no one disputes this. The method by which they protect the existing industry is to make a choice for the consumers.
He said that conventional agriculture alone cannot meet the global meat demand as it grows. “We’ve always seen ourselves as a ‘and.’ It’s not about stopping [conventional] meat — it’s about having other options.
The Good Food Institute estimates that the cultivated meat industry will have raised $896mn in 2022. This brings the total amount of the industry up to $2.8bn, since 2016.
Upside Foods, a Berkeley California company, raised $400mn in 2022 from Temasek. The Abu Dhabi Growth Fund. Baillie Gifford. SoftBank. Bill Gates. John Doerr. The Bezos Earth Fund – a philanthropic initiative launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – pledged $60mn this month for academic research and the development of alternative proteins. This includes faux meats that are made from plants like peas or soyabeans.
Shapiro stated that the meat industry is afraid of innovation, and is lobbying lawmakers to try to ban it. It would be like Blockbuster lobbying legislators to try and ban streaming video.