Shackling American Innovation: The Crusade to Criminalize Cultivated Meat

Fortunately for us consumers, this didn’t happen. Yet something very similar is happening today in the meat industry.

In the past, the only way to get meat was by slaughtering an animal. A new crop of startups, though, is challenging the status quo. They’re developing the ability to cleanly and directly grow real, actual animal meat—just without animals. And like streaming video, they assert that using these innovative new methods will be much more efficient than breeding, feeding, and slaughtering whole animals.

With such meat declared safe to eat by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, two startups in the United States recently began selling very limited volumes of their cultivated chicken at restaurants in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Yet instead of welcoming innovation and consumer choice, some industry lobbyists went straight to work, persuading lawmakers to protect the status quo by making it illegal to sell slaughter-free meat.

Already, Florida and Alabama have passed legislation to criminalize the sale of meat grown without animals. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis supported such legislation, objecting to the cultivated meat industry in a public statement this winter: “You need meat, okay? We’re going to have meat in Florida. We’re not going to have fake meat. Like, that doesn’t work.”

A number of other state legislatures are considering similar crackdowns on cultivated meat. Although it’s been shelved, Tennessee legislators this year considered a bill that would have imposed a $1 million fine for selling cultivated meat. For context, violent armed robbery in Tennessee carries a maximum fine of $50,000.

Not everyone in the meat industry wants to slaughter this nascent field of cultivated meat, which is still largely in a pre-market, R&D phase. In fact, the Meat Institute lobbied against Florida’s ban. The industry trade group’s COO, Mark Dopp, argued that “decisions about what to consume or purchase should be left to the market and consumers, not dictated by legislation that hampers progress and competition.”

However, the opinion of the largest meat industry trade association was insufficient for many lawmakers in the Sunshine State. Ignoring Dopp’s focus on consumers and the free market, they voted along party lines to pass this legislation, picking winners and losers before any competition even begins.

Florida lawmakers haven’t been shy when asked why such a ban is necessary.

Bill sponsor Rep. Tyler Sirois said the silent part aloud, telling Politico: “Farming and cattle are incredibly important industries to Florida.” It would be as if Florida (also home to Blockbuster’s corporate headquarters at one point) made no secret of why it tried to criminalize streaming.

As countries like China actively encourage research into cultivated meat, bans like those in Florida and Alabama threaten to make American agriculture as obsolete as a VHS tape. Netflix started with a mail-order DVD model, yet was forward-thinking enough to embrace streaming innovation even though it risked cannibalizing the company’s cash cow. Sadly for Blockbuster, it wasn’t as forward-thinking. At least Blockbuster never sought to deprive the rest of us of the choice of streaming.

Current meat industry incumbents would be wise to follow Netflix’s example. Instead of fighting innovation, they can be part of a more efficient, humane, and sustainable meat future. Rather than using lawmakers to suppress competition in the marketplace, by working with entrepreneurs, the meat industry could help make American agriculture the global winner for future hearts and stomachs.

The opinions expressed in Dialogue are those of the author.