The steaks are high: Florida Republican wants to ban lab-grown meat

A lawmaker wants to make it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or distribute it.

 

By BRUCE RITCHIE

11/15/2023 06:25 PM EST

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida Republican has a beef with lab-grown meat.

State Rep. Tyler Sirois has proposed legislation that would make it a criminal offense to sell ”cultivated” meat in Florida, claiming that it’s an “affront to nature and creation” and the latest front in the “ESG agenda” — referring to environmental, social and corporate governance, which has been target of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican state leaders.

“Farming and cattle are incredibly important industries to Florida,” Sirois said in an interview on Wednesday. “So I think this is a very relevant discussion for our state to have.”

Sirois, a developer who said he doesn’t have ties to agriculture, said he hopes Florida will become the first state to ban cultured meat.

He also has a powerful ally supporting him: Wilton Simpson, the state’s agriculture commissioner and former Senate president, who is “100%” behind the effort.

“Without this legislation, untested, potentially unsafe, and nearly unregulated laboratory produced meat could be made available in Florida,” Simpson, an industrial egg farmer, said in a statement.

 

Proponents argue lab-grown meat, like the product pictured, can reduce the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste. | Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

 

The U. S. Department of Agriculture last June approved two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat Inc., to sell cultivated meat, though it’s not yet readily available in grocery stores. The faux meat is grown from animal cells and can be formed into nuggets, cutlets or other shapes and proponents argue it can reduce the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just Inc., which operates Good Meat, told The Associated Press.

There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation, which represents the emerging cultivated meat industry and has promoted its sale in restaurants.

The association says on its website that cultured meat “will be a critical and sustainable component, in partnership with the overall agriculture sector, to meeting increased demand for meat as the world’s population continues to grow.”

Sirois said he finds the process of growing meat in a laboratory, using chemicals and enzymes, to be “deeply troubling.” His legislation would make it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or distribute it.

“I think it raises important ethical concerns about the limitations and boundaries we should place on this type of science,” he said. “I think you could see a very slippery slope here leading to things like cloning, which are very troubling to me.”

Sirois also said the USDA and the federal Food and Drug Administration are part of the ESG push behind lab-grown meat. He noted that the Legislature earlier this year had targeted environmental, social and governance scoring factors in state investments.

“That’s the message that is being sent here is that the laboratory-produced product is superior to conventional farming and cattle ranching,” Sirois said. “But to me my focus is on making sure No. 1 that we are not acting here without understanding the consequences of manipulating this material in a laboratory — manipulating cells that are harvested from animals — and also making sure Floridians have a clear understanding of what is going on here.”

The nonprofit advocacy group Organic Consumers Association and the trade and lobbying organization National Cattlemen’s Beef Association also have raised concerns at the national level about the production and labeling of cultivated meat.

Sam Ard, director of governmental affairs for the Florida Cattlemen’s Association, told POLITICO his group hasn’t taken a position on the bill but opposes calling the lab-grown product “meat.”

“It’s not meat,” Ard said. “Meat comes from a cow. Meat comes from a live animal.”

 

Article Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/15/florida-republican-lab-grown-meat-ban-00127447

On one hand I want to agree that it should be outlawed but on the other, the food industry has been making fabricated food products for decades without anyone stopping them. It’s all fake food and it’s all poisonous.
If we are going to outlaw fake meat then we should also outlaw all highly processed foods as well as seed oils. It’s all bad and detrimental to our health.
Unfortunately, the only reason they are against the production of this false meat is economic and not health.


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I'm kinda on the fence about this too for the same reasons. I can think of all kinds of foods that should be illegal because they are basically slow-acting poisons that harm you over the course of years and decades.

I'm not putting lab grown meat in my mouth, so I hope there is clear labeling and they don't try to wrap this up and present it the same way real meat is wrapped, weighed, and presented. I would expect it will be in a shrink-wrapped package inside a box that boasts how it's lab grown, so it should be clear.

If it's presented deceptively, I will probably have to start buying everything from my local rancher. 

I could see where the sneaky outfits could start mixing in real hamburger, sausage and lunch meat and labeling it in very fine print. Very few people read ingredient labels.
Since becoming carnivore I have become a voracious label reader. It’s amazing and sad how much crap they put in food. The deception is downright criminal.


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While lab-grown meat will certainly stop environmental damages caused by the meat industry, nevertheless, the main question that needs to be addressed is at what cost? Lab-grown meat will surely save resources that are otherwise used for raising animals for meat but we will also be putting artificial meat inside our body that might have a lot of consequences.

Not sure I am ready for replicated meat, either

 

4 hours ago, Nomad said:

but we will also be putting artificial meat inside our body that might have a lot of consequences.

And that is my primary concern. To date, putting all kinds of man-made processed foods into our bodies has a lot of consequences, even if it takes years for those consequences to become manifest. I would suspect lab grown meat would be the same.

I'll let others be the guniea pigs for this. 😄

 

While lab-grown meat will certainly stop environmental damages caused by the meat industry,

There are no environmental damages caused by the meat industry. That is a myth and outright lie that is perpetrated by agenda driven idiots that no absolutely nothing about the livestock industry. Raising livestock is the most natural and ecological form of raising food there is.
You want to see what damaging to our environment? Then look at agricultural farming. It destroys the land, pollutes it and destroys beneficial wildlife.

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Estimates of the contribution by cattle to global warming that may occur in the next 50 to 100 years is a little less than 2%. In short, cows and eating meat are a non-issue.