Curious to try a lab-grown chicken sandwich? Don’t look to satiate your craving in Mississippi, which earlier this week moved to ban so-called cultivated or cell-derived meat.
The proposed ban, unanimously passed by the House of Representatives, carries a $500 fine and up to three months in jail for anyone growing or selling such products within the state.
The bill, which Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, a Republican, is expected to sign, is the latest in a series of legal maneuvers by states seeking to constrain the nascent cell-cultured meat industry — despite the fact that such products are currently unavailable to consumers in the United States.
In contrast with alternative-meat products like Impossible Burger, which are made entirely from plants, lab-grown meat starts as cells taken from an animal. By nourishing them with a cocktail of nutrients, scientists can coax these cells to develop into animal muscle, connective tissue or fat — the basic components of meat.
Proponents say cultivated meat can address the many environmental impacts of farmed livestock and provide meat eaters a protein that does not require the slaughtering of animals.
Last year, Florida and Alabama became the first states to outlaw the cultivation and sale of meat grown in laboratories, and a number of other states, including Nebraska and Georgia, are considering similar measures.
The bans are unconstitutional, proponents say, and won’t survive court challenges, some already underway. “It’s a whole lot of political theater,” said Suzannah Gerber, executive director of the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation, a trade group.
The opposition to cultivated meat has mostly taken hold in red states, but the trend defies easy categorization. Trade groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Meat Institute have come out against restrictive measures, and Republican lawmakers in Wyoming and South Dakota have quashed similar bills, with many describing the proposed bans as anathema to conservative values like limited government and free trade.
“If we let the government decide what foods we eat and what medicines we take, our bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny,” State Senator Bob Ide of Wyoming, quoting Thomas Jefferson, said shortly before voting against the measure in his state.
For now, the measures are unlikely to have much real world impact. Although the prospect of mass produced lab-grown meat has prompted breathless headlines and drawn billions in investment, its commercial viability remains unproven.
Only two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, are currently authorized to sell cultured meat in the United States; the companies briefly sold limited quantities to a few restaurants, none of which were in states that have passed the bans.
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration granted regulatory clearance to a third company, Mission Barns, for a lab-grown pork fat product. In addition to being under F.D.A. oversight, cultivated meat products are regulated by the Department of Agriculture.
Some opponents of cultivated meat traffic in falsehoods about the health risks of cultivated meat, while others, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have embraced the opportunity to defend domestic livestock producers.
But cultured meat has also been swept up in the nation’s culture wars. That’s in part because proponents often describe lab-grown meat as a “no kill” humane alternative to farmed animal products. Many also see it as a way to reduce the environmental impacts of raising millions of cows, pigs and chickens — and of the large quantities of antibiotics required to keep them healthy in crowded feeding sheds.
“There’s no way we can sustain healthy food the way we’re doing today with livestock production, because we just don’t have the land and the resources,” said David Kaplan, an expert on cellular agriculture at Tufts University. “We need alternative options.”
Such sentiments inflame politicians who look unkindly on vegetarians and environmentalists, and for whom the consumption of a juicy T-bone steak is an act of patriotism.
Last May, in announcing his decision to sign the state’s ban, Governor DeSantis sought to cast his stance as a blow against liberals. “Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” he said during a news conference.
The environmental benefits of cultivated meat remain theoretical, and studies suggest that certain production methods could be energy intensive, especially if implemented on a large scale.
Cultivated meat begins with a small sample of animal cells, which can be collected from fertilized eggs or tissue biopsies from living animals. The cells are nourished with nutrients, multiplying rapidly in large tanks called bioreactors. A variety of technical hurdles remain. It is much easier to create ground meat products than intact cuts of meat, and producing cultured meat is expensive and has been done only on a very small scale. Experts say that companies will need to drastically ramp up production, and bring down costs, in order for these products to really compete with conventional meat.
Americans, it would seem, are ready to give cultivated meat a try. In a 2024 survey by Purdue University, two-thirds of respondents said that they would be open to eating cultivated chicken or beef in a restaurant.
According to Joseph Balagtas, director of the school’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability, which conducted the survey, consumers consistently report that taste and price are the biggest factors influencing their food decisions. Ultimately, he predicted, the fate of cultivated meat will depend on whether companies can clear those two bars. “If it tastes good and it’s affordable, then consumers will eat it,” he said.
Last year, Good Meat began selling its cultivated chicken at a butcher shop in Singapore, the first country to approve lab-grown meat. Josh Tetrick, a founder and the chief executive of Eat Just, the parent company of Good Meat, said that the company had sold less than 100 pounds in the last six months.
“Can companies like ours figure out a way to manufacture this at scale, defined as tens of millions of pounds, at a cost that makes sense?” he asked. “That’s the big question.”
For now, industry executives are trying to thwart the state restrictions.
Upside Foods filed a federal lawsuit last August challenging the Florida law as unconstitutional. The Good Food Institute, an alternative meat advocacy group that is providing legal assistance to Upside Foods, argues that the bans violate the commerce clause of the Constitution, which bars states from interfering with interstate trade. The laws, experts say, also violate the so-called pre-emption doctrine, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws when the two conflict.
“These laws are pretty flagrantly in violation of both,” said Madeline Cohen, the institute’s associate director of regulatory affairs.
Backers of the Mississippi bill have not publicly explained their antipathy to cultivated meat; state legislators did not hold a public hearing or comment before unanimously voting for the ban. Representatives Bill Pigott and Lester Carpenter, two Republicans who introduced the legislation, did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Reeves, the Mississippi governor, declined to comment, as did the state’s agriculture commissioner, Andy Gipson.
Still, Mr. Gipson has not been shy in criticizing cultivated protein as hostile to farmers. “I want my steak to come from farm-raised beef, not a petri dish from a lab,” he wrote last year on his website.
Cultivated meat proponents describe the dichotomy as a false one, and many livestock farmers agree, saying they do not see cell-derived products as a threat to their livelihood. “We know Americans love our product and will continue to buy it,” said Sigrid Johannes, a spokesperson for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
Doug Grant, a Mississippi native whose seafood start-up, Atlantic Fish Co., is seeking to produce black sea bass in the lab, agrees. He said his product, should it gain regulatory approval, would not put him in competition with local producers, noting that overfishing has led to declines in the black sea bass population, and that the species is difficult to raise in aquaculture pens.
“Mississippi raises a lot of catfish, but no one is talking about doing cultivated catfish,” Mr. Grant said. “I understand that people are scared of new things, but no one is forcing consumers to buy these products. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to eat them.”
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