Florida Bans Lab-Grown Meat: Here’s What It Means – 2024
A bill that forbids and makes it illegal to produce and sell lab-grown meat in Florida, was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday.
The bill is in line with previous initiatives from Tennessee, Alabama, and Arizona, three other states that have also sought to outlaw the sale of lab-grown meat, which is still years away from being economically viable.
Why Lab-Grown Meat has been Banned in Florida?
Cultivated meat AKA lab-grown meat, has garnered a lot of interest recently as a result of businesses raising millions of dollars to advance the technology needed to produce a more environmentally friendly substitute for conventional meat sources.
Typically, harvested meat is cultivated from a portion of animal cells in a metal tank.
They grow in an apparatus known as a bioreactor while being supplied with water, lipids, vitamins, and amino acids.
This is a process that can be challenging to carry out at scales big enough to produce sufficient food for market sale.
How This “Florida Meat Ban” is Going to Affect Businesses?
Nevertheless, a few businesses have made progress. Two entrepreneurs in California were granted permission by US authorities to market chicken raised in a lab last year.
These businesses said Florida’s policy inhibits innovation in an increasingly competitive global market.
Another cultured meat firm, Upside Foods, said that the prohibition may jeopardize Florida’s supply chain’s resiliency by making it more difficult for the state to meet the state’s estimated twofold increase in global protein consumer demand by 2050.
China is the primary rival in the farmed meat market. To combat the emission of greenhouse gases and prevent food shortages,
China incorporated the technology into its most recent five-year agriculture plan.
Ten Democratic senators from Florida, including Lori Berman, had similar reservations about China in their votes against the package.
She referred to the law as “shortsighted,” believing that farmed beef would solve the issue of future food shortages.
Proponents claim that because farmed meat is still not on par with wild meat, the prohibition is preventive.
Even premium organic meat products are less affordable than Good Meat’s products. Before output can be increased to the point of price parity, decades may pass.
