Nebraska has become the sixth US state to ban cultivated meat, after Governor Jim Pillen signed the bill that he had initially requested.
Jim Pillen, owner of the largest pork producer in Nebraska, happily signed a bill sent to his desk on Tuesday. It was one he himself had dreamt up months ago, and it would protect the very industry he’s built his fortune on.
The Nebraska governor put pen to paper on LB 246, officially banning the production, sale or import of cultivated meat within state boundaries. Anybody violating this would face penalties under the Pure Food Act, and as well as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
“We need to be willing to protect and preserve our state’s vital ag industry as well as our consumers,” said Pillen. “These products are grown from harvested cells in bioreactor machines. The health consequences are unknown, and so are the long-term effects to consumers.”
It marks the culmination of what Pillen had labelled “a full-blown attack on lab-grown meats and fake meat” in August, when he signed an executive order putting restrictions on these proteins and announcing his intention to ban them in 2025.
At his request, Senator Barry DeKay brought forward the bill in January, which describes cultivated meat as an “adulterated food product”. While there was apprehension from some fellow Republicans, as well as the very industry Pillen said he was aiming to safeguard, the bill finally made it through the state chambers.
Nebraska’s ban helps Gov Pillen more than anyone else
When signing his executive order in August, Pillen indicated his desire to protect animal agriculture from the “extraordinary, crazy views out there that there’s going to be different ways to feed the planet”.
He took a jibe at Bill Gates, who has invested in a number of alternative protein companies, including California’s Upside Foods, which has sued Florida for a similar ban. “There’s a guy that made some money in building computers. He needs to stay in the computer space and knock this stuff off thinking that he’s going to promote lab-grown meat. He’s lost his brains,” said Pillen.
“We are the beef state,” he added. That’s the issue, though. Agriculture is the largest source of Nebraska’s emissions, contributing to 42% of the state’s climate footprint – and beef production alone accounts for 55% of this share, and 23.7% of the state’s overall emissions.
Pillen said Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers (which includes himself) “are committed to producing the best food products anywhere”.
“We feed the world, and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else, and I will defend those practices with my last breath,” he said.
Pillen’s hog farm operation has made him a multimillionaire. Pillen Family Farms is one of the nation’s largest pork producers and received a $286M loan from a lender in 2023. It has also come under scrutiny for having dangerously high nitrate levels in its farms’ water supply, which puts the health of both farmers and consumers at risk.
So it’s a little tough to take Pillen at his word about who this cultivated meat ban would benefit.
Farmers opposed cultivated meat ban in Nebraska
Nebraska’s ban faced more opposition than Pillen perhaps anticipated. Lawmakers like Senator Merv Riepe, as well as the Nebraska Farm Bureau preferred to address the labelling of cultivated meat instead of outlawing it, especially since it’s not available in the state yet.
Opposition also came from ranchers and farming groups, who said they didn’t need the government’s help to compete with cultivated meat. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, going on to describe his disdain for lawmakers’ efforts to stifle competition in a free market.
He noted that governments should only be limited to regulating product labels and inspecting facilities – something the US Department of Agriculture already does when reviewing regulatory applications for cultivated meat. “After that, it’s up to the consumer to make the decision about what they buy and eat,” said the beef farmer.
The final bill didn’t pass unanimously, with 11 lawmakers voting against it. Now that it has succeeded, Nebraska has become the sixth state to ban cultivated meat – and the fourth in the last couple of months. It joins Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, South Dakota and Indiana (the latter has placed a two-year moratorium).
More than 20 states have tried to do so over the last few years. In the current legislative session, South Dakota, South Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, and Georgia have all been mulling the move.
It reflects the shifting political and cultural landscape in the US, with President Donald Trump and colleagues like JD Vance and Robert F Kennedy Jr all denouncing “fake meat”, just as consumers spend more on meat than ever before.
While more such legislation are likely on the way (as are legal challenges like that of Upside Foods), it does feel like a colossal waste of resources to ban something that has barely made it out of the gates, and is only trying to safeguard the future of an industry causing copious amounts of pollution, and being subsequently ravaged by climate change.
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