As Florida's beef farmers treat lab-grown meat as a threat, the nation's largest meat packing association sees things otherwise.
The North American Meat Association sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis and legislative leaders saying a ban on cellular agriculture violates the free market principles the state normally touts.
Mark Dopp, CEO and General Council for the Meat Institute, said consumers should have a choice whether to add cultivated meat to their diet.
"The Meat Institute is agnostic regarding whether Floridians will buy cell cultivated meat products. Perhaps they will; perhaps they will not," Dopp wrote. "But restricting the sale and manufacture of cell cultivated meat products limits consumer choice and denies Floridians access to food options."
The Senate last week passed a Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services package (SB 1084) that includes a complete ban on the sale or distribution of cultured meat. The House expects to take up the companion bill (HB 1071) on the floor this week. And legislation that has a chance to pass this Session must be approved by both chambers by Friday.
The legislation included exemptions to allow scientific research in the growing field. But Sen. Jay Collins, the Tampa Republican running the bill in the Senate, argued that artificial meat shouldn't be available for public consumption until the distant future. "We need more time than five years," he argued on the floor.
The Meat Institute letter noted, however, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already approved cultivated meat and established a regulatory process for its inspection.
"Decisions about what to consume or purchase should be left to the market and consumers, not dictated by legislation that hampers progress and competition," Dopp wrote.
Indeed, his letter questioned whether the state even has the constitutional authority to override federal authority on the regulation of food.
But aside from whether Florida can ban the manufacture of cultivated meat in Florida labs, Dopp said it's bad policy to go down that road. And it could put Florida behind other states by banning an industry in its infancy from operating during a period of critical growth.
The letter compared an all-out ban on cultivated meat to animal confinement bans approved by liberal voters in California and Massachusetts. While intended to discourage certain agriculture practices with the raising of pork, cows and chicken, those policies only served to encourage more agriculture activity in other states.
The same could happen with cellular agriculture, driving commercial and research activity into meat cultivation to other states.
"Legislators and others who beat the 'food safety' drum in support of HB 1071 and SB 1084 do so at their peril, and the peril of others," Dopp wrote.
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