Nebraska governor signs executive order barring state agencies from buying lab-grown meat

Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE) signed an executive order that bars state agencies from purchasing “lab-grown” or “fake meat.”

Pillen, alongside the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, announced three initiatives on Thursday that he said would protect Nebraska ’s agriculture industry from lab-grown meat . The executive order bans state agencies from obtaining lab-grown meat, requires state contractors to commit to not discriminating against meat producers in favor of lab-grown meat producers when making purchases, and enacts new labeling requirements.

“We’re being proactive and making sure that silly things aren’t happening because they are happening on the coasts,” Pillen said. “If we sit back and wait until the grocery stores are full, that’s not the way we want to lead.”

Nebraska’s Department of Agriculture said it will unveil new labeling guidelines for lab-grown or fake products “simply to protect consumers from being misled.”

Florida, Iowa, and Alabama have similar measures that ban lab-grown meat in some way. Florida and Alabama outright ban the production and sale of fake meat, which Pillen indicated he would push for in the next legislative session.

In Iowa, a recent law prohibited imitation meat products from being misleadingly labeled as meat. Nebraska Agriculture Director Sherry Vinton said Nebraska will implement similar measures as Iowa in requiring manufactured protein or lab-grown meat to be clearly labeled differently from “natural, real meat.”

Vinton also said standards will be developed to determine whether the advertising of lab-grown meat products is misleading or mislabeled. It is unclear what repercussions, if any, companies will face should they violate the yet-to-be-unveiled labeling requirements.

During his 2022 campaign, Pillen ran on taking on fake meat, according to the Nebraska Examiner . In May, Nebraska led a multistate lawsuit against a California regulatory board and the Environmental Protection Agency over their regulations on internal combustion engines and greenhouse gas emissions.

The governor and officials at the state’s flagship university, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln , said they believe the livestock industry contributes more than $6 billion to Nebraska’s economy each year. Pillen also owns a large hog operation in the state.

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At the executive order signing, Pillen said he should have embraced the changes on his “second day” in office.

“We feed the world, and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else,” Pillen said. "And I will defend those practices with my last breath."