Lab-grown meat is not currently available in any U.S. grocery stores or restaurants. If some lawmakers have their way, it never will be.
Earlier this month, both Florida and Alabama banned the sale of cultivated meat and seafood, which is grown from animal cells. In Iowa, the governor signed a bill prohibiting schools from buying lab-grown meat. Federal lawmakers are also looking to restrict it.
It's unclear how far these efforts will go. Some cultivated meat companies say they're considering legal action, and some states – like Tennessee – shelved proposed bans after lawmakers argued they would restrict consumers' choices.
Still, it's a deflating end to a year that started with great optimism for the cultivated meat industry.
The U.S. approved the sale of lab-grown meat for the first time in June 2023, allowing two California startups, Good Meat and Upside Foods, to sell cultivated chicken. Two high-end U.S. restaurants briefly added the products to their menus. Some cultivated meat companies began expanding production. One of Good Meat's products went on sale at a grocery in Singapore.
But before long, politicians were pumping the brakes. Lawmakers in seven states introduced legislation that would ban cultivated meat, according to Kim Tyrrell, an associate director with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In the U.S. Senate, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced a bill in January to prohibit the use of lab-grown meat in school lunch programs.
The backlash isn't confined to the U.S. Italy banned the sale of lab-grown meat late last year. French lawmakers have also introduced a bill to ban it.
The pushback is happening even though lab-grown meat and seafood are far from reaching the market in a meaningful way because they're so expensive to make. Cultivated products are grown in steel tanks using cells from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a storage bank. The cells are fed with special blends of water, sugar, fats and vitamins. Once they've grown, they're formed into cutlets, nuggets and other shapes.
State Sen. Jay Collins, a Republican who sponsored the Florida bill, noted that the legislation doesn't ban research, just the manufacturing and sale of lab-grown meat. Collins said safety was his primary motivator, but he also wants to protect Florida agriculture.
"Let's not be in a rush to replace something," he said. "It's a billion-dollar industry. We feed a ton of people across the country with our cattle, beef, pork, poultry and fish industries."
Meat producers did back the bans in Florida and Alabama. The leaders of those states' cattlemen's associations – which are advocacy groups for ranchers – stood next to both governors as they signed the bans into law.
But the picture is more complicated at the national level, where the meat industry doesn't support bans on cultivated products. Some meat producers, like JBS Foods, are working on developing cultivated meat of their own.
"We do not support the route of banning these outright," Sigrid Johannes, the director of government affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said. "We're not afraid of competing with these products in the marketplace."
The Meat Institute – which represents JBS, Tyson and other big meat companies – sent a letter to Alabama lawmakers warning them that the state's ban was likely unconstitutional since federal law regulates meat processing and interstate commerce.
The founders of Wildtype, a San Francisco-based company that makes cultivated salmon, traveled to Florida and Alabama to testify against the bills but weren't able to sway the outcome. They hope someone will challenge the bans in court but say it's not realistic for their tiny company to take on that battle.
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Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
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