Bans on lab-grown meat are motivated by a desire to protect local cattle farming, not to protect human health. Lab-grown meat isn’t any worse for your health than meat from a farm. So a judge has ruled that Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat may violate the Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids discrimination against out-of-state businesses:
“We will save our beef,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared when he signed the nation’s first ban on cultivated meat last May, portraying the law as part of his administration’s “focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers.” Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson concurred that the governor was “standing up for Florida’s farmers and consumers,” saying “we must protect our incredible farmers” from “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity.” He promised to “keep Florida’s agricultural industry strong and thriving.”
According to Upside Foods, a California-based manufacturer of lab-grown poultry products, those comments reflect the protectionist motivation of Florida’s law, which it says effectively discriminates against out-of-state businesses. On Friday, a federal judge in Florida concluded that the company, which sued state officials last August, had plausibly alleged a violation of the “dormant” Commerce Clause, a doctrine that “prevents the States from adopting protectionist measures and thus preserves a national market for goods and services,” as the U.S. Supreme Court put it in 2019.
“One of the primary reasons for the enactment of the Constitution was to secure a national common market,” said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which represents Upside. “Today’s ruling is an important vindication of the principle that states cannot close their borders to innovative out-of-state competition, and a warning to other states that are considering banning cultivated meat.”
The technology that DeSantis perceives as a threat to “our local farmers and ranchers,” which was first developed in 2013, uses cell samples to grow meat in bioreactors, obviating the need to raise and slaughter animals. Worldwide, more than 150 companies are working on such products, which have been approved for sale in Singapore, Israel, and the United States, where their distribution so far has been limited to chicken briefly sold by a few restaurants.
Less than a week after DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1084, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey likewise approved a preemptive ban on cultivated meat. Other states, including Arizona, Tennessee, and Texas, have “considered similar bills banning lab-grown meat”… although they “ultimately did not pass.”
In addition to portraying Florida’s ban as unconstitutional protectionism, Upside argued that it was preempted by federal law. Although U.S. District Judge Mark Walker rejected that claim, he found that Upside “has plausibly alleged that Florida’s ban violates the dormant Commerce Clause by discriminating in effect against interstate commerce through excluding out-of-state businesses and products from Florida’s market to protect in-state businesses against a projected decline in market share.” Walker therefore rejected the state’s motion to dismiss Upside’s lawsuit.
S.B. 1084 makes it a crime to manufacture or distribute “any meat or food product produced from cultured animal cells.” That offense is classified as a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $500 and up to 60 days in jail. Grocery stores or restaurants that sell the prohibited products can lose their operating licenses and face administrative fines of up to $5,000 per violation.
The judge notes that “Florida’s ban” allegedly “discriminates against out-of-state firms and products because it prohibits out-of-state cultivated meat from entering Florida to compete against in-state conventional meat…since cultivated meat is entirely produced outside of Florida.” Allegedly, “the ban also confers a benefit to in-state conventional meat and agricultural businesses by shielding them from the potential decline in market share that they would face from competing with out-of-state cultivated meat.
Florida’s agriculture commissioner, in touting the ban, emphasized that the lab-grown meat was coming from out of state, saying that it was “Californians [who] are participating in this crap.”
The bill’s signing event featured the leaders of the Florida Cattlemen’s Association, who “acknowledged that the purpose of the Ban is to protect their industry from out-of-state competition.”
Rep. Dean Black (R–Nassau County), a rancher who backed the bill, said Florida residents who want to try cultivated meat should “go to California,” but they “sure as heck” should not get it “here in Florida.”
Governor DeSantis justified the ban by saying, “We stand with our farmers.” If the state allowed the sale of cultivated meat, he said, it would “wipe the people sitting here today” — Florida “cattle ranchers” — “out of business.”
Florida’s ban does not appear to be “supported by any adequate health or safety justification.” In approving the lab-grown meat,the FDA “had no questions regarding the safety of UPSIDE’s pre-harvest production process or the safety of foods composed of or containing cultivated chicken resulting from UPSIDE’s production process,” and “the safety and healthfulness of cultivated meat and poultry is subject to the same standards of federal regulation as conventional meat and poultry.” Florida officials “did not cite concerns that cultivated meat is less healthy or safe than conventional meat.” If anything, Upside argues, “cultivated meat and poultry poses fewer health and safety concerns than conventional meat because it is grown under clean and controlled conditions and thus not exposed to animal waste, animal pathogens, or environmental toxins.”
Britain has approved lab-grown meat, but it has been banned in Italy to protect farmers from competition.
A company has created woolly-mammoth meatballs, resurrecting the flesh of long-extinct giants.
If people are concerned about the environmental impact of consuming meat, they can also shift to consuming types of meat that don’t have as much effect on the environment. For example, guinea pigs are a much more efficient source of protein, per acre, than cattle, generating four times as much meat per acre. Guinea pigs also generate less greenhouse gas emissions per pound of meat. So they are an earth-friendly food.
