Earlier this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his support for a ban on the barely-there food — cell-cultured or “laboratory-grown” meat — dismissing the concept at a press conference.”We’re not going to do this fake meat,” DeSantis, a Republican, told the crowd. “
It doesn’t work.”DeSantis cited a Florida state law that prohibits the production and sale of celluloid meat, which is different from products from companies like Impossible Foods that use plant-based ingredients to imitate meat. Instead, cell cultured meat is real meat, but made without animals. It is produced by taking a small sample of animal cells and feeding them a mixture of amino acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other ingredients for several weeks until it grows into edible meat..
Republican state Rep. Danny Alvarez, the lead sponsor of the Florida bill, says the “unknowns of the new technology are so great” despite years of reviews by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that found the useful products. be derived from two cell cultured meats. startups are safe to eat.Rep.
Tyler Sirois of Florida, another Republican who introduced a similar bill late last year, offered a different — and perhaps fairer — reason to ban cell cultured meat: to protect the state’s farmers from competition. “Agriculture and livestock are incredibly important industries for Florida,” Sirois said in an interview with Politico in November.
Sirois also called cellular muscle “an insult to nature and creatures”. I wonder if he would say the same about some of the practices prevalent in the meat industry – such as extreme confinement, eating pig feces and butchering live male piglets.What is happening in Florida is part of a larger political strategy to thwart the emerging cell culture meat industry.
Arizona lawmakers enacted a similar ban last month, with one Republican supporter saying, “We want to protect our cattle and our ranches.”
One of the supporters is a cattle breeder himself. The bill is moving forward in Parliament, having passed two committees this month.Meanwhile, Tennessee politicians are calling for a ban on the sale of celluloid meat, which would result in fines of up to a million dollars for violators.
Federal lawmakers in heavy agricultural states, mostly Republicans but also some Democrats, are erecting barriers to cell-raised meat with the support of the conventional meat industry.In late January, US Sens.
Jon Tester (D-MT) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) announced a federal bill that would ban cell cultured meat in school cafeterias. “Tester Wins Over Montana Ranchers,” reads part of the headline in a press release from Tester and Rounds about legislation passed by beef industry groups.
Days later, a bipartisan group of farm members of Congress introduced legislation in both houses — supported by several meat trade groups — requiring all cell-raised or plant-based meat products to be labeled “imitation.” “
meat or poultry.Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a similar bill that will limit the ability of cell cultured meat companies to market their products. Arizona is now considering even more restrictive labeling legislation.Such protectionism flies in the face of the usual platitudes that voters – especially those on the right – usually spout about competing free markets, regulation and innovation.
DeSantis has boasted that Florida is number one for business, but he supports laws that would stifle business.But the invoices are also hollow if you consider that cell meat is not even sold.Cell-cultured meat has a long way to commercial viability (and it may not get there)Last summer, two cell-cultured meat companies made their products available in very limited quantities at some high-end restaurants—one in San Francisco. , one in Washington—in less than a year.
Both are disabled.Between 2016 and 2022, venture capital firms invested nearly $3 billion in more than 150 startups worldwide developing cell culture meat technology, which was proposed as a solution to the enormous carbon footprint of conventional meat and its large contribution to deforestation, air, and pollution.
water pollution and animal cruelty.While many startups have demonstrated proof of concept, it is not certain that they will be able to scale and compete with factory-produced meat. you certainly won’t be seeing their products in school cafeterias anytime soon.
Its proponents argue that the industry needs government funding to advance its research and development, as received by renewable energy and electric vehicles..
