The 2024 Legislative Session will address some meaty topics, including one about what meat is — and isn't — according to the Florida Senate and House.
On Tuesday, Sen. Clay Yarborough filed SB 586, which would, if enacted, squash efforts to bring lab-created beef and other synthesized animal flesh products to Florida groceries, restaurants, and plates.
Yarborough's bill is the Senate companion of Rep. Tyler Sirois' product in the House, which has been referred to three committees. The Agriculture, Conservation, and Resiliency subcommittee is the first stop, but the bill is not on a Committee agenda yet.
So-called "cultivated meat" was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year and is available in select restaurants. Rather than traditional meat harvesting that involves mass slaughtering animals, meat cultivation in this context involves growing products from isolated cells.
Currently, those cells are sourced from animals, but expectations are that cell banks will eventually allow carnivores to reap the meaty harvest.
The Jacksonville Republican's bill would deem it "unlawful for any person to manufacture, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in this state," with 2nd-degree misdemeanor penalties attached to violations of the law — which could earn fake meat perpetrators 60 days in lockdown or a $500 fine.
The bill also contemplates penalties for a "food establishment that manufactures, distributes, or sells cultivated meat," leaving those fake-meat purveyors "subject to disciplinary action" that could include revocation of the right to operate.
The "license of any restaurant, store, or other business may be suspended as provided in the applicable licensing law upon the conviction of an owner or employee of that business for a violation of this section in connection with that business," which would include an "immediate stop-sale order."
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