Lab-grown meat faces mounting resistance as federal lawmakers push restrictions

• Lab-grown meat is not currently sold in U.S. grocery stores or restaurants, and some state lawmakers are working to keep it that way.
• Florida and Arizona have enacted laws banning the sale of cultured meat and seafood, and Iowa has banned their purchase in schools.
• Lab-grown chicken was approved for sale in the United States in June last year, but political backlash has led to proposed bans in several states.

Lab-grown meat is not currently sold in American grocery stores or restaurants, and if some lawmakers have their way, it likely never will be.

Earlier this month, Florida and Arizona banned the sale of cultured meat and seafood grown from animal cells, and in Iowa, the governor signed a bill banning the purchase of cultured meat in schools. Federal lawmakers are also trying to restrict it.

It’s unclear how far these efforts will go: Some cultured meat companies have said they are considering lawsuits, and some states, such as Tennessee, have shelved proposed bans after lawmakers said they would limit consumer choice.

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Still, it’s a disappointing end to a year that began with great optimism for the cultured meat industry.

The United States first approved the sale of cultured meat in June 2023, allowing two California startups, Good Meat and Upside Foods, to sell cultured chicken. Two upscale U.S. restaurants temporarily added the product to their menus. Some cultured meat companies have begun to scale up production. One of Good Meat’s products was sold in a grocery store in Singapore.

But politicians quickly began pumping the brakes: Lawmakers in seven states have introduced bills to ban cultured meat, according to Kim Tyrrell, vice president of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In the U.S. Senate, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced a bill in January to ban the use of cultured meat in school lunch programs.

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The backlash is not limited to the United States: Italy banned the sale of cultured meat at the end of last year, and French lawmakers have also introduced a bill to ban cultured meat.

The backlash comes even as lab-grown meat and seafood are a long way from being commercially viable because they’re too expensive to produce. Cultured products are grown in steel tanks using live animals, fertilized eggs, or cells taken from storage. The cells are fed a special mix of water, sugar, fat, and vitamins. Once grown, they’re formed into cutlets, nuggets, or other shapes.

Companies have focused on expanding production to cut costs and getting government approval to sell their products. Now they’re considering how to respond to state bans. Upside Foods has started a Change.org petition urging supporters to “tell politicians to stop policing our dinner tables.”

“It would be a shame to have the doors closed before we even get out the door,” said Tom Rossmeisl, global marketing director for Good Meat, who said the company was considering legal action.

Those in favor of the ban say they want to protect farmers and consumers, and that cultured meat has only been around for about a decade and they are concerned about its safety.

“Alabamians want to know what they are eating, but we have no idea what is in this food or how it affects us,” Republican state Sen. Jack Williams, who sponsored the Alabama bill, said in an email to The Associated Press. “Meat comes from livestock raised by hardworking farmers and ranchers, not from a scientist’s laboratory dish.”

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But cultured-meat industry officials say their products must pass rigorous government safety tests before they can be sold, and they say the emerging industry is not trying to replace meat but to find a way to meet the world’s growing demand for protein.

Rossmeisl said the development of cultured meat and seafood is currently led by the United States, with 45 companies in the field, but that could change. In January, for example, an Israeli company received preliminary approval to sell the world’s first steaks made from cultured beef. China is also investing heavily in cultured meat.

“It should be surprising and concerning to Americans that we are putting up barriers to something that could be really important to our economy and our food security,” he said.

Republican Sen. Jay Collins, who introduced the Florida bill, noted that his bill would not ban research, just the production and sale of lab-grown meat. Collins said his primary motivation is safety, but that he also wants to protect Florida’s agriculture industry.

“There’s no rush to change anything,” he said. “This is a multi-billion dollar industry. We feed a lot of people across the country with our cattle, beef, pork, chicken and fish industries.”

Rossmeisl believes the meat industry is trying to avoid what happened to the dairy industry with the introduction of plant-based alternatives like oat milk: Plant-based milks accounted for 15% of U.S. milk sales last year, up from about 6% a decade ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Good Food Institute, an advocacy group for plant-based and cultivated products.

Meat producers supported the Florida and Alabama bans, and leaders of both state Cattle Growers Associations, advocacy groups for ranchers, stood alongside the governors as they signed the bans into law.

But at the national level, the situation is more complicated, and the meat industry does not support a ban on cultured meat. Some meat producers, such as JBS Foods, are working on developing their own cultured meat.

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“We don’t support a blanket ban on these,” said Sigrid Johannes, director of government relations for the National Beef Producers Association. “We’re not afraid to compete with these products in the marketplace.”

The Meat Institute, which represents JBS, Tyson and other major meat companies, sent a letter to Alabama lawmakers warning that the state ban is likely unconstitutional because federal law regulates meat processing and interstate trade.

The founders of Wild Type, a San Francisco-based farmed salmon company, traveled to Florida and Alabama to testify against the bill but were unsuccessful in overturning the ruling. They hope someone will challenge the ban in court, but say it’s not realistic for their small company to take on the fight.

“We are David and across the aisle there is a giant Goliath,” said Wildtype co-founder Arie Elfenbein.