There is a culture war raging over cultured meat

• The fledgling lab-grown meat industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the culture wars.
• GOP politicians in four states have passed or are considering bans on “cell-cultured” food products.
• But industry insiders say that while their products are disruptive, they are not political.

Move over, electric vehicles and gas stoves: a new product is at the center of the culture wars.

In recent months, Republican politicians have targeted lab-grown meat — also called “cell-cultured” or “cultured” proteins — in an effort to criminalize its production and distribution before the companies that make the products can enter the market.

And with the industry still in its infancy, Republican lawmakers are trying to strangle it in the cradle by crafting a philosophical wedge to keep consumers away.

“They’re blaming agriculture for global warming. I know the Legislature is passing a bill to protect our meat. You need meat, okay? We’re going to eat meat in Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference in February. an investment in broadband access in rural areas wherever he is expressed support for SB1084, a bill in Florida to ban cultured meat.

“We’re not going to eat fake meat; it doesn’t work,” DeSantis continued. “So we’re going to make sure we get it right. But there’s a whole ideological agenda that’s coming after a lot of important parts of our society.”

Despite DeSantis’ insistence that cultured meat is a cultural issue, manufacturers certainly don’t see it that way.

“There is nothing about cultured meat that is conservative or liberal,” says Josh Tetrick, CEO of GOOD Meat – a cultured meat company with the largest market share of the global industry to date. “It has nothing to do with either party.”

SB1084 passed both houses of the state legislature and was submitted to the governor for consideration on March 6. A spokesperson for DeSantis told Business Insider that the governor “will review the legislation in its final form once it is delivered to our office” and pointed to his February comments on the nationwide ban on cell-cultured proteins.

Meanwhile, some of it is happening all over the country an invoice introduced by Arizona State Representative David Marshall, states: “Livestock is one of the five fundamental pillars that have driven Arizona’s economy since territorial days,” adding that “this legislation is necessary to protect the sovereign interests, history, economy and protect Arizona’s food heritage.”

Other red state politicians are also responding to the threat to their red meat, including Alabama State Senator Jack Williams and Tennessee State Rep. Bud Hulsey, who have supported or proposed legislation to ban cultured meat in their states.

Representatives for Marshall, Williams and Hulsey did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

An FDA official told Business Insider that manufacturers must ensure that foods meet all applicable federal requirements from the FDA and USDA before entering the U.S. market. Until now, only a handful of laboratory-grown meats met these requirements.

“The FDA continues to support innovation in food technologies, resulting in more choices for consumers in the marketplace, while also prioritizing the safety of foods produced through both new and traditional methods,” the official said, adding that the agency “had no questions about the safety of the cell-cultured foods produced using the FDA-evaluated process.”

They ‘use cultured meat as a cudgel – and that’s just stupid’

While the fledgling cultured meat trade has the potential to reduce the need to slaughter animals for protein, reduce the environmental impact of factory farming and disrupt animal agriculture as we know it, say insiders working to to market laboratory-grown products. the innovations are anything but political.

Their Meat giants like Cargill and Foster Farms’ relative market share and production capacity also remain far too small to pose any threat to traditional livestock farming, industry insiders told Business Insider.

But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from targeting the sector, much to the dismay of those trying to market their products.

“The past century of American prosperity has been driven by free-market policies, and it is disappointing to see lawmakers taking action against what has made the US the world’s largest economy,” said George Peppou, CEO of Vow, which is sells cultured meat. product in Singapore, BI told. “Let the market decide with their own wallets, not with legislators.”

“There’s no question that there’s an attempt to create this right-left divide by using cultured meat as a cudgel — and it’s just foolish,” says Tetrick, whose GOOD Meat has less than 5,000 pounds of its cultured chicken protein sold since it was given permission to sell. in Singapore in 2020.

“We think it’s quite hypocritical because there’s a lot of chest-thumping going on in a lot of these states about free-market capitalism and the American approach,” he said. “But as they pat themselves on the back, they say, ‘Except when it comes to something that could potentially harm an industry I depend on for donations.'”

According to OpenSecrets, Greener Pastures, a poultry farming company, donated $100,000 to DeSantis in 2022, just one major donation of the $1,700,118 the governor received from various agricultural companies that year.

Senator Williams of Alabama, whose bill passed in February makes it a Class C misdemeanor to produce, sell or distribute farm-raised meat in his state, accepted $11,000 in donations to the agriculture industry in 2022, including $2,500 from the poultry and egg industries, the political donation watchdog found.

Representatives for DeSantis and Williams did not say whether their agriculture campaigners influenced their positions on banning lab-grown meat.

GOOD Meat received approval from the USDA to sell its product in the United States in June 2023 and is one of only two cultured meat companies to receive the green light to date. Representatives for the other company, Upside Foods, declined to comment for this article.

Tetrick told BI the bans are just a stumbling block for companies like his as they grow. “And we think they’re going to be shot anyway,” he said.

While it can be frustrating to navigate individual states trying to overturn a federal agency’s approval, some in the industry think the efforts to ban their products are a sign that they are doing something right.

“If you put energy into banning something that doesn’t even exist on the market yet, that’s amazing – it means it’s going to be huge,” says Roman Lauš, founder and CEO of Mewery, a Czech food tech startup working on the development of cultivated pork that does not yet have approval in the US, BI said.

“But I would say it is a political decision, and politicians should not, in principle, get involved in food safety matters; they should let the customers decide what they want to eat,” he added. “If the USDA and the FDA approve this type of food, I would say that is the highest authority in the entire country, and their word should be followed.”