The Florida legislature is set to ban lab-grown meat across the state, with Governor Ron DeSantis arguing that beef needs to be “rescued”. The ban will cover both the production and sale of lab-grown meat.
Lab-grown meat has been on the rise in recent years, a trend that began in Singapore in 2020. In the US, two lab-grown meat companies were approved for sale last year.
Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee are three US states that have considered banning lab-grown meat, something Florida has also taken up the fight against.
– Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals, DeSantis said, according to NBC News. We will save our beef.
On Wednesday, DeSantis signed a new bill that would ban both the sale and production of lab-grown meat.
“Discriminatory legislation”
Companies behind lab-grown meat, including Upside Foods, say the ban could put Florida at risk by hindering the state’s ability to meet the growing demand for protein, which is expected to double by 2050.
“This type of discriminatory legislation jeopardizes the United States’ leadership in biotechnology and enables countries like China to gain unfair advantage”, Upside Foods writes in an email.
Dean Black, a cattle rancher and one of the Florida Republican representatives who pushed the bill through, argues that cultured meat should be considered a national security issue. He points out, for example, that concentrating protein production in factories could lead to famine if those facilities were hit by missiles.
In Italy, lab-grown meat was banned early last year because it was seen as threatening the traditional link between food and farming.
