Republican Lawmaker Wants to Make Florida the First State to Ban Lab-Grown Meat

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TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Selling fake meat could land you in the can if one Florida lawmaker gets his way.

State Rep. Tyler Sirois (R-Brevard) filed a new bill that would outlaw the production, sale or distribution of “cultivated meat.”

HB 435 defines cultivated meat as “any meat or food product produced from cultured animal cells.” The current proposal threatens violators with a second-degree misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $500 and up to 60-days in jail.

Florida’s agriculture commissioner Wilton Simpson said he “100 percent” supports the bill.

Sirois called lab-grown meat “affront to nature and creation” and “deeply troubling.”

“Farming and cattle are incredibly important industries to Florida,” Sirois told Politico on Wednesday. “I think this is a very relevant discussion for our state to have.”

The lawmaker said no other states have banned fake meat and he hopes to make Florida the first to do so.

FAKE MEAT A PRECURSOR TO CLONING?

Sirios points out that the lab-grown is being advertised as a superior food option to real meat, a notion he rejects. His concerns go beyond misleading promotions, however.

“My focus is on making sure we are not acting here without understanding the consequences of manipulating this material in a laboratory – manipulating cells that are harvested from animals,” Sirios said. “And also making sure Floridians have a clear understanding of what is going on here.”

In addition to potential health risks, the Treasure Coast lawmaker believes there are bigger societal questions at play as well.

“I think it raises important ethical concerns about the limitations and boundaries we should place on this type of science,” he added. “I think you could see a very slippery slope here leading to things like cloning, which are very troubling to me.”

FAKE MEAT: MADE WITH “CANCEROUS” CELLS

Lab-grown meat is tissue grown from cells in a petri dish, or as companies in this space are planning to do: in huge vats called bioreactors. In a feature story on these companies, Bloomberg reported that artificial processes of bioengineering food can be cancerous.

“To get the cell cultures to grow at rates big enough to power a business, several companies… are quietly using what are called immortalized cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally,” reporter Joe Fassler wrote. “Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.”

THE PUSH FOR “SUSTAINABLE” FOOD

Sirios’ bill comes as food industry giants and government leaders pledge to bioengineer more “sustainable” food.

In September 2022, President Biden issued an executive order on “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy,” in which he committed his administration to “cultivating alternative food sources.” Biden’s declaration came one month after the World Economic Forum’s Yuval Noah Harari claimed that eating meat is “immoral and unsustainable.”

In 2021, the European Union approved mealworms, crickets and grasshoppers as human food.

Eat Just has plans to build a US facility with ten 66,000-gallon bioreactors, enough to produce 30 million pounds of lab-grown meat per year. Meanwhile, Bon Appetit reported in January that over 100 companies “flush with capital” are busy creating lab-grown beef, seafood, lamb, duck, pork, and more.

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