MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Campaign in several US states to ban sale of lab-grown “cultivated” meat

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has banned lab-grown meat, saying he will “save our beef” from the “global elite” and its “authoritarian plans”.

Several US states, spear headed by Florida are on a campaign to ban the sale and distribution of lab-grown or “cultivated” meat. The process of making cultivated meat involves extracting cells from an animal, which are then fed with nutrients such as proteins, sugars and fats, and they were first cleared for consumption in the US in 2022. The end product is genetically indistinguishable from traditionally produced meat.

Likewise studies have suggested that eating cultivated meat can cut carbon emissions and water usage, and free up land for nature, compared to eating traditionally produced meat.

The World Economic Forum, an international non-governmental organization in Switzerland, has for years touted lab-grown meat as an efficient and environmentally-friendly way to produce food, and feed a rapidly growing global population. It has also promoted insect farming as a “credible and alternative protein source”.

Lobbyists for edible insects have launched a campaign asking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add mealworms, crickets protein powder and other insect products to the agency's database of safe ingredients.

But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has banned lab-grown meat, saying he will “save our beef” from the “global elite” and its “authoritarian plans”.

“Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs,” Mr DeSantis said in a statement. Similar efforts are under way in Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee.

At an event on Wednesday announcing the new law, Mr DeSantis said he was “fighting against an ideology that ultimately wants to eliminate meat production in the US and around the globe”.

“In the state of Florida we've put down the marker very clearly; we stand with agriculture. We stand with the cattle ranchers,” he said.

Florida's commissioner of agriculture Wilton Simpson applauded the legislation as a “tremendous step in the right direction”.