Florida bans lab-grown meat, joining similar efforts in four states

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Wednesday banning and criminalizing the manufacture and sale of lab-grown meat in the state.

The legislation joins similar efforts by three other states — Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee — that have also sought to prevent the sale of lab-grown meat, which is believed to still be years away from commercial viability.

“Florida is fighting the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in petri dishes or insects to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said. “Let us save our flesh.”

Lab-grown meat, also known as cultured meat, has attracted considerable attention in recent years as startups have raised millions of dollars to improve technology aimed at creating a climate-friendly alternative to traditional meat sources. Cultured meat is usually grown in a metal container from a sample of animal cells. They multiply in a container called a bioreactor while being fed water, amino acids, vitamins and lipids – a process that can be difficult to carry out on scales large enough to create enough food for commercial sale.

Still, some companies have made progress, with two California startups receiving approval from U.S. regulators last year to sell laboratory grown chicken.

These companies said the Florida bill stifles innovation in a space that is becoming globally competitive.

“The United States has a tremendous lead in terms of alternative proteins right now. We have 43 cultured meat companies in the world. But this kind of political rhetoric and these laws put that in danger,” said Tom Rossmeissl, head of global marketing at Eat Just Inc., the company behind cultured meat brand Good Meat.

Upside Foods, another cultured meat startup, said the ban could jeopardize the resilience of Florida’s supply chain by hampering the state’s ability to meet the projected doubling of global protein demand by 2050.

“This type of discriminatory legislation puts America’s leadership in biotechnology at risk and allows countries like China to gain unfair advantages,” Upside Foods said in an email to NBC News.

The main competitor in the cultured meat industry is China, which has included the technology in its latest five-year agricultural plan as a way to combat greenhouse gas emissions and avoid food shortages.

Lori Berman, one of Florida’s 10 Democratic senators who voted against the bill, expressed similar concerns about China. She called the bill “shortsighted,” seeing cultured meat as a solution to future food shortage problems.

“The livestock industry has lobbied against cultured meat, so we are now banning an entire industry in our state,” Berman said. “We’re just fooling an entire industry.”

Dean Black, a cattle rancher and one of the Florida Republican representatives who pushed for the bill’s passage, told NBC News that cultured meat is a national security concern. He fears that concentrating protein production in factories could lead to famine if those facilities are hit by a missile.

At the bill’s signing, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson said the ban was intended to protect “the integrity of American agriculture.”

Supporters say the ban is preventative because cultured meat is still far from competing with regular meat. Good Meat’s product is still more expensive than high-quality organic meat products. It may take decades before production can be scaled up to reach price parity.

Paul Shapiro, author of the book “Clean Meat: How Farming Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dining and the World,” compared the Florida bill to a ban on video streaming to try to protect Blockbuster video stores. Shapiro is the CEO of The Better Meat Co., which makes plant-based “meat” from fungi.

“The legislation that was enacted in Florida seeks to kill this industry while we are still in its infancy,” Shapiro said. “Even under the most optimistic estimates, meat produced from animal cells will not be on the market in any significant way within the next five to 10 years.”

Good Meat spent three years working with federal regulators to ensure food safety, but supporters of the ban still have health concerns. Black said more research is needed to assess whether lab-grown meat contains the same micronutrients as real meat.

“Although the FDA has stated that this type of product is safe, that does not mean it is healthy,” Black said. “In Florida, we do not want our citizens to be used as guinea pigs.”

Justin Tupper, president of the American Cattlemen’s Association, called the bill a “victory” for similar reasons. Although he said he doesn’t fear competition, he is concerned about the chemicals in the new product.

“We don’t want lab-grown meat to harm our good reputation as the best and safest protein on the planet,” Tupper said.

But Rossmeissl and Shapiro said there is little merit to the health concerns because cultured meat has almost identical nutritional value as real meat. Additionally, conventional meat often contains fecal and intestinal pathogens as well as antibiotic residues, which need to be cooked for safe consumption, Shapiro said.

“With clean meat, you don’t have to worry as much about intestinal pathogens when the intestines aren’t growing,” Shapiro said.

Rossmeissl added that consumers should be free to choose whether they trust the product.

“It’s not about security. This is a culture war,” Rossmeissl said.

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with