What is lab-grown meat, and why does Ron DeSantis want to ban it in Florida?

In tanks the size of beer vats, companies on the U.S. west coast are developing a new generation of steaks, patties and cutlets, attempting to largely cut mother nature out of the equation of producing your dinner entrée.

And in Florida, lawmakers want to kill the concept before it grows in their state.

Lab-grown meat, approved last year for sale in the U.S. by federal agencies, is being targeted by Florida Republicans over safety concerns. Bills that would make selling or distributing the product illegal are moving in the House and Senate, even though experts in the biotech industry say it is far from being shipped to grocery stores for retail sales.

Danny Alvarez, the sponsor of HB 1071, said in a recent House Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee meeting that the proposed ban on cultivated meat is “putting the safety of Floridians first.”

“Right now, we don’t have the information for a consumer to make an educated, informed consensual decision … until we have long-term studies that tell me what lab-grown immortalized cells do to your body,” said Alvarez, R-Hillsborough County. “I challenge you to put it in your child.”

The legislation arrives at a time when the producers of lab-grown meat are pushing their product to market, arguing that they could alter the path of climate change and potentially change space exploration.

Tom Rossmeissl, head of marketing for Good Meat — one of two companies approved to sell cultivated meat in the U.S — says that the U.S is currently a leader in the industry, but the proposed legislation from Florida could put that in jeopardy.

“When you start trying to ban certain products in such an important state like Florida, you’re sending a really bad message to innovators, scientists, investors, that somehow the United States doesn’t want this innovation,” Rossmeissl said in an interview with the Miami Herald.

If the legislation passes, Florida would be the first state to ban the sale of cultivated meat, though the Alabama Senate has approved legislation that would criminalize its sale.

“You need meat, OK?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a recent news conference. “We’re going to have meat in Florida. We’re not going to have fake meat. Like, that doesn’t work.”

What is cultivated meat?

Cultivated meat is created by harvesting animal cells in tanks called cultivators or bioreactors. The cells are fed nutrients and water, and eventually are harvested from the tanks as a biomass similar to minced meat that can be turned into things like patties, nuggets and more.

Two California companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods, were approved last June by the USDA to sell their cultivated chicken meat products, which the companies planned to offer at select restaurants.

Cultivated meat is not currently available for U.S consumers to buy at the grocery store and figuring out how to mass-produce it is still a big road block within the industry.

Joel Stone, a biotechnology expert at Lee Enterprises Consulting, said that until there’s some sort of breakthrough, the current economics around cultivated meat don’t allow for it to be sold in mass any time soon. Stone pointed out that similar methods for growing animal cells have been used to create medicine, but those methods don’t translate well for selling food.

“Recognize that those drugs are selling for thousands of dollars per kilogram. You don’t sell meat products in the grocery store for about a thousand per pound. So that’s what can get confusing, because people will say, ‘Well, they’ve been doing this in pharmaceuticals for years,’ and the answer is ‘Yes, but the economics are completely different for food production,’” said Stone.

In an email to the Herald, a spokesperson for Upside Foods said the “complexity” of its efforts to scale-up production “makes predicting a specific timeline challenging.”

The controversy over cultivated meat

Alvarez, the sponsor of the House bill, said last week that he sees the ban as a way to “pump the brakes” on cultivated meat to protect Floridians, but critics of the legislation say lawmakers are using the bills to try to protect the cattle industry.

“We spent more than three years working with the USDA and FDA to verify that our product is safe,” said Rossmeissl, from Good Meat. “There’s no credible safety concerns coming from our opposition. This is about the legislature trying to help one industry, the cattlemen, and they’re willing to attack consumer choice and innovation in order to do so.”

Good Meat pushes back on their products being described as “lab grown meat.” A spokesperson from their company said that their products are not made in a lab, but in “USDA approved facilities.”

An Upside Foods spokesperson wrote in an email to the Herald that USDA inspectors are onsite at their facility “at all times” when their products are being made and packaged and wrote that their company went through a “years-long process with the USDA and FDA to determine the safety” of their product.

Rep. Lindsay Cross, D-St. Petersburg, said the state’s agriculture industry shouldn’t see cultivated meat as a threat but rather as a possible solution that could help solve the issues related to Florida’s growing population.

“As we run out of ag lands, we will have to look at alternative food systems. I would rather have that come from Florida than China,” said Cross.

Alvarez and other proponents of the legislation noted that the research of cultivated meat will still be allowed in Florida with or without the bill.