Where’s the beef? Artificial meat is nixed in Florida

The lawyers will duke it out now. Florida’s ban of lab-grown meat is being challenged in the courts.

That should come as no surprise as meatless burgers are beginning to make real inroads in the fast-food industry. Big money is at stake.

Here’s what triggered the brouhaha.

Last May, Florida’s governor signed into law a bill that banned the production and distribution of lab-grown meat in the state. The ban, the first in the country, did not cover plant-based ingredients.

The primary intent of the legislation was to protect Florida’s agriculture industry, where beef production is 9th largest among states. There was also the question of safety. Agriculture Secretary Wilton Simpson said, “Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.”

Whatever the reason for the ban – Alabama,

Kentucky, Iowa and Texas are about to follow suit – there’s now enough at stake to justify a knockdown legal battle. Money talks.

There’s also an environmental component. Methane emissions from livestock and farm animals – mainly from belching, flatulence and feces – make up 8% of overall greenhouse gases, a large enough carbon footprint to be troubling. Eliminate those emissions and you can, at least to a limited degree, slow climate change.

TRECKER

The development of meat substitutes has been a fascinating journey. It started with veggie burgers many years ago. The mixture of ground-up vegetables tasted terrible and never caught on.

A big improvement came when mycoprotein from fermented yeast was combined with certain plant ingredients. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods parlayed that into an international business that has struggled, in part because the food didn’t taste like real meat.

Cell-grown meat does. And its manufacture has been proven. As developed by Upside Foods in California, the process involves culturing animal cells, adding certain nutrients and replicating the cells in large bioreactors. The resulting product has muscle, fat and connective tissue – a slab that looks and tastes like meat from a slaughtered animal.

Current cost is three times that of natural beef or chicken, but the cost will come down once manufacturing reaches full commercial scale. And the product has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of meat production by nearly 92%.

How good really is cell-grown meat? Taste tests are promising. Texture and flavor of Upside’s cultivated chicken slabs get high marks, although no comparisons have yet been made to natural poultry in a controlled clinical setting. In any event, consumers will make the final call.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s approval in 2023 cleared the way for commercial use in this country. Thirty-two startups around the world are poised to begin production once they receive approvals from their local regulatory agencies.

Market introduction will be gradual. Christopher Kerr, chief investment officer of New Crop Capital, said, “You have to be patient … cell-based meat will enter the market slowly, but once it does, it will be revolutionary.”

The predicted “revolution” is hastening the legal battle.

Paul Sherman, an Institute for Justice attorney, was quoted as saying a preliminary injunction is pending. If approved, it would allow Upside to sell cell-grown meat in Florida while the lawsuit progresses.

The legal challenge is a milestone. If one state can successfully ban cultivated meat, other states can as well. That puts free-market introduction of such products in real jeopardy. Sherman says, “States simply do not have the power to wall themselves off from products that have been approved by the USDA and FDA.”

So stay tuned. You’ll want to be there “when the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”

It may take a while. ¦

Dave Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Florida.

The post Where’s the beef? Artificial meat is nixed in Florida first appeared on Bonita Springs Florida Weekly .