In budding battle over lab-grown meat, Florida takes opening stab

Cultured meat, meet cul‐ ture war. The first rhetori‐ cal shots have just been fired in a political battle that could last years.

The catalyst: lab-grown meat.

Florida this month be‐ came the first U.S. state to ban meat created from cell cultures. Alabama is follow‐ ing suit. Other states are en‐ acting softer restrictions. Even in Canada, early whis‐ pers of the discussion are stirring.

It's no surprise that a politician renowned for fling‐ ing himself into the forefront of the most polarizing de‐ bates wound up taking the opening stab at lab meat.

Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a bill that sets a $500 US fine, corporate penalties and potentially even 60 days in jail for mak‐ ing, selling or distributing lab meat in his state.

DeSantis insisted lab meat isn't some benign product about which consumers can make their own choice.

Instead, the Republican governor cast it as an early step in a sinister plot by global elites to eventually ban livestock farming en‐ tirely, and supplant it with manufactured meat and the eating of insects.

"I recognize the threats," DeSantis said. "Take your fake, lab-grown meat else‐ where. We're not doing that in the state of Florida."

There are, of course, com‐ mercial interests at play. De‐ Santis celebrated the signing in the company of cattle in‐ dustry representatives, a sec‐ tor that donates primarily to Republicans.

But this reflects a broader political divide - a rural-urban split that's come to dominate American politics; a contest, if you will, between lab coats and cowboy hats.

Given that their voter pool is twice as rural, it's hardly shocking that Republicans are riding pre-emptively to the defence of the cowboys.

More than 12 Republicanled states have passed laws that require special labels, with some entirely forbidding use of the word "meat."

What's the beef with lab beef?

Here's what makes this a preemptive strike: the culturedmeat industry barely exists. Lab-grown chicken was first approved for sale in the U.S. last year.

With the exception of brief marketing experiments in a couple of restaurants, it's still not commercially avail‐ able.

And it's exorbitantly ex‐ pensive. While prices have dropped from the eye-water‐ ing $330,000 US for the first lab-made burger, one 2022 study presented the bestcase retail scenario as $25 Cdn for a small lab-beef hamburger. It's also energyintensive, at least for now.

The industry calls these normal growing pains for an innovative sector. To bet against lab meat now, propo‐ nents say, is as foolish as the decades-old prognostications of doom for solar panels and electric vehicles.

They insist the sector can grow to deliver massive ben‐ efits.

The potential payoff in‐ cludes reduced animal suf‐ fering, saving precious antibi‐ otics for human use and eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions from livestock. They argue it can also save the Earth's habitable land, most of which for livestock. is now used

How the debate unfold‐ ed in Florida

That's the debate that played out in the Florida Legislature.

At a committee hearing early this year, a Democratic state senator wondered why the Republicans were going for an all-out ban.

Lori Berman asked: Why not just adopt a labelling re‐ quirement that lets con‐ sumers make their own deci‐ sion?

"We talk a lot about being a free-market [state] here," she said, adding that lab meat could help solve some major global challenges.

"Protein is really impor‐ tant for the world. We're going to be having more and more problems. We want to look at innovative solutions."

Members of the public who spoke all denounced the legislation. They included a scientist who was born in Iran.

Wearing a white lab coat at the hearing, Faraz Harsini said he escaped his native country - where he said he protested and was almost killed - seeking opportunity and academic freedom. He now works for a non-profit that promotes alternatives to traditional meat.

Iran's government "inter‐ fered with all aspects of my life, from my academic re‐ search to what I was allowed to say, wear and even eat," he said.

"This bill brings up a lot of bad memories."

He used diabetes to illus‐ trate his point about the po‐ tential benefits of this sci‐ ence. As recently as the 1980s, he said, it took the pancreases of 24,000 cows and pigs to make a year's supply of insulin for 700 peo‐ ple, and now safer insulin, with fewer side effects, is mass-produced in labs in a field the U.S. dominates.

He also mocked the idea that a state that is home to space launches, at Florida's Kennedy Center, would risk its role in long-term space ex‐ ploration: "How would you feed astronauts in extended space [stays]?" Harsini asked rhetorically. "How would you ship a cow to space?"

LISTEN | The future of protein?

Lawmakers apparently heeded that warning. Unlike the original draft of the bill, the final version includes wording to protect space re‐ search, specifying that the ban applies only to lab meat manufactured "for sale."

Other speakers cast it as a matter of national security because the U.S. relies partic‐ ularly on seafood imports which could in part be offset by lab meat.

The bill's original sponsor defended it.

State Sen. Jay Collins is a former Green Beret who lost his leg from injuries in Afghanistan, and who coleads a non-profit barbecue company that received state contracts.

Before that, he grew up on a farm. He's says his family struggled, and wound up losing its farm. He says he won't sit idly by and let it happen to others.

Listening to the complain‐ ts at the hearing, the Republi‐ can senator noted most of those complaining came from outside the state.

Florida has "zero jobs" in lab meat, Collins said, where‐ as "our beef industry, is very strong. We're going to contin‐ ue to grow that. That's our focus."

Lest anyone there doubt it, he went on to insist that he believes in free-market capitalism: "I am an advocate for the free market."

With this ban, Florida fol‐ lows Italy, which, last fall, be‐ came the first country to ban lab meat. In Canada, the livestock industry isn't de‐ manding an outright ban.

But a related discussion is happening right now. Ottawa is several weeks into a re‐ quest for public comments that ends May 27, as it re‐ views a national food-safety law.

Canada's cattle industry says it's involved in that dis‐ cussion, and is asking that cell-cultivated proteins be in‐ cluded in the review.

In an email to CBC News, the Canadian Cattle Associa‐ tion says its goal is to not have this product labelled as "meat." It also wants cell-cul‐ tured proteins to be sub‐ jected to regulations, like oth‐ er food products.