Resistance from lawmakers sympathetic to ranchers and the broader meat industry has put cultured meat companies in a difficult position. Major meat producers Cargill and Tyson have invested in cultured meat companies, while Brazil’s JBS is building a cultured research base in Brazil. “We see ourselves as an ‘and’ solution, not an ‘or’. We never seek to replace traditional [meat]Sean Edgett, chief legal officer of Upside Foods, a cultured meat startup whose investors include Cargill and Tyson Foods. “We think there will always be a place for it in the market. So when I see these bills, they look very protectionist.”
Wildtype co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Ayré Elfenbein visited legislators in Arizona, Alabama and Florida to try to convince them to vote down or amend proposed legislation in those states. “The shift we’re seeing is towards a more extreme direction, towards outright bans,” Elfenbein said. The co-founders are particularly keen on excluding farmed seafood, pointing out to lawmakers that the U.S. is a net importer of seafood and that new sources of fish would improve the country’s food security.
Also worrying cultured meat companies are proposed bills that would impose new labeling restrictions. A proposed bill in Arizona would ban companies from using the term meat to describe products made from cultured meat, plants or insects. West Virginia passed a similar bill in March that would require any cultured meat products to be labeled as “cell-cultured,” “lab-grown” or similar terms. Almy said it’s a worrying sign that lawmakers are proposing legislation that would conflate cultured meat with insect meat – which many potential consumers find disgusting.
Sparsha Saha, a lecturer on meat and politics in the Department of Government at Harvard University, said the political backlash against cultured meat is not surprising. “I think this is always going to be political fodder because you have conglomerates, you have a very powerful and increasingly integrated meat and dairy industry,” she said.
In Florida, the debate is particularly heated. In the House of Representatives, Representative Dean Black called cultured meat “bacterial cultures” and “nitrogen-based cell protein paste.” Representative Daniel Alvarez compared the cells found in cultured meat to cancer.
Elfenbein says such an argument is profoundly wrong. “A lot of the arguments are made under the guise of safety,” he said. Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Day X Comparison of The FDA’s conclusion that cultured meat from two U.S. companies is safe to eat belies the mandate. “This is essentially a political war,” Saha said.
Eggett said lawmakers struck a more balanced tone behind closed doors. “The conversations we have with all these legislators in the office are very different than the conversations they have in the field,” he said. Upside Foods published a blog post urging potential customers to ask Gov. DeSantis to veto the bill.
In Europe, resistance from lawmakers to cultured meat is also growing. In November, the Italian Parliament approved a ban on the food, which is currently unavailable to customers anywhere in Europe. However, it is unclear whether the Italian law is valid as it could violate EU directives aimed at removing regulatory barriers within the bloc. At a meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council on January 23, some representatives called for “a renewed broad debate on lab-grown meat in the EU”.
“Such laws emerging in the U.S. and EU appear to be mostly political theater, but have the potential to negatively impact research, at least in those regions,” said cultured meat research nonprofit New Harvest. “These laws are also arguably an unintended byproduct of the competitive hype cycle in the market, designed to create excitement but may actually work both ways.”
The prospect of more proposed state-level bans lurks behind the scenes. West Virginia introduced a proposed ban this year, but it is no longer an active bill. In 2023, Texas lawmakers introduced a proposed ban, but it did not become law. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this bill comes up again,” Almy said. Still, she hopes that if a similar bill is introduced, lawmakers will hear enough from nonprofits like GFI and cultured meat startups that they won’t go down the same path as Florida. Cultured meat may be approved for sale in the United States, but the race to convince lawmakers to accept it is just beginning.