Florida has banned making and selling meat that is grown in a laboratory, a move several other states have considered amid worries about consumer safety and concerns that the technique could hurt the beef and poultry industries.
A number of start-up companies are developing technologies to grow beef, chicken and fish by using cells taken from animals without harming or slaughtering them. The process is expensive and the widespread availability of so-called lab-grown meat is years away. Beef and poultry associations, as well as some conservatives, have opposed the industry, calling it anti-farmer.
In a news release announcing that he had signed the ban, Gov. Ron DeSantis said his administration was committed to investing in local farmers and ranchers. “We will save our beef,” he said.
He also cast the ban as pushback against “global elites” who have a “plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.” The news release linked to a 2021 article on the World Economic Forum website discussing global food shortages and lamenting that insects are often overlooked as a source of protein.
Florida State Representative Lindsay Cross, a Democrat, called the ban “anti-business and contrary to how we’ve tried to market Florida as a place of free enterprise.”
“We should have more choices for our consumers,” Ms. Cross said.
To create and cultivate the meat, cells are removed from live animals and then water, salt and nutrients like amino acids, minerals and vitamins are added to the cells, which multiply in large tanks. The resulting meat product can be shaped into patties or sausage forms.
Groups concerned about the environmental effects of raising animals for meat had lobbied against Florida’s restrictions, as did many of the companies that are spending millions of dollars to create laboratory-grown meat.
Geopolitics even entered the debate after opponents of the ban raised a recent report, published on a state-owned Chinese news site that said the Florida ban “strengthens China’s dominant position in this field.” Government officials in China have prioritized the development of cultivated meat.
Last year, the U.S. Agriculture Department approved the production and sale of cultivated chicken meat by two California companies. Proponents of cultivated meat point to the approval as proof that meat grown in a lab is safe.
San Francisco-based Wildtype, which is working on lab-grown salmon, on its website called the ban “a short-sighted decision driven by politics.”
Tactics aimed at growing food in environmentally conscious ways have become enmeshed in America’s culture wars. Some studies and polls have shown that food choices are sometimes split along party lines, with veganism for instance identified with liberalism while conservatives eat more meat than others.
Remarks by Governor DeSantis, at a ceremony in the Hardee County Cattleman’s Arena in Wauchula, acknowledged the political divide. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said he was protecting the meat industry “against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate,” he said at the ceremony.
In his wide-ranging remarks, Governor DeSantis called the meat “fake” and said supporters of the technology wanted to eliminate meat, cattle and chickens. (The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations advocates eating less meat, and some environmentalists support diets that don’t include meat.)
The governor highlighted several other measures aimed at protecting farmland and otherwise benefiting the agriculture industry. “These will be people who will lecture the rest of us about things like global warming. They will say that, you know, you can’t drive an internal combustion engine vehicle, they’ll say that agriculture is bad,” he said. “Meanwhile, they’re flying to Davos in their private jets,” a reference to the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting in Switzerland that attracts prominent businesspeople and politicians from around the world.
Florida’s ban would punish anyone who makes or sells lab-grown meat with up to 60 days in jail. A half-dozen other states have considered measures this legislative session to restrict the sale of meat grown in a laboratory.
Besides environmentalists, other opponents of restrictions include companies adjacent to the space industry that want to sell cultivated meat for space travel. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has partnered with Aleph Farms, an Israel-based company, to research lab-grown meat on a Space X flight to the International Space Station that launched from Florida.