Arizona’s House of Representatives is deliberating over two new bills that aim to restrict the sale of cultivated meat, with one suggesting an 18-month prison term for violators.
The season of state-level attempts to ban cultivated meat has begun.
This month, policymakers in Virginia, South Dakota, and Arizona have already floated bills to restrict or entirely prohibit the sale of these proteins within their borders.
Perhaps the most outlandish of them all landed in the latter’s House of Representatives this week, as pastor and Republican lawmaker Lupe Diaz sought to make it illegal for companies to sell cultivated meat in the state with HB 2791.
The bill’s text states that a person violating this rule would be guilty of a Class 5 felony, which means they could – in theory – be headed to prison for 18 months.
You read that right: sell food, and go to jail for a year-and-a-half. That is the proposal the House Land, Agriculture & Rural Affairs committee will read this week, instead of dealing with the climate emergency threatening the state (caused in large part by the same industry that cultivated meat is trying to take the pressure off of).
Bill sponsor spews misinformation in support of cattle industry
Diaz’s bill suggests that nobody can sell cultivated meat for human consumption in the state – unlike proposals in other states, it doesn’t mention anything about manufacturing these proteins.
So it’s uncertain whether companies would still be allowed to produce cultivated meat in Arizona and sell it elsewhere. Plus, cultivated meat for pet food seems fair game at the current stage.
“The way that the meat is made, I just don’t trust it,” Diaz told Capitol Media Services. “It’s accelerated cell growth.”
He went on to serve some heavy-handed, unchecked misinformation. “There’s a lot of cancer concerns in that because they’re using enzymes and that kind of stuff,” he said, without evidence, and without mention of the numerous studies that have linked red and processed meats with cancers and other diseases.
“How do they accelerate it, where does it stop, how does it affect the body? I don’t think those studies have really been done yet,” he added.
Diaz then hinted at the true driving factor behind his effort. “I’d really like to go ahead and support our ranchers as well,” he said, irrespective of the fact that meat producers have welcomed the competition and criticised bans on cultivated meat.
This isn’t a surprise, though, given the cattle industry forms one of Arizona’s five Cs of the economy (alongside copper, cotton, citrus and climate).
Seven states have already banned cultivated meat. Florida‘s legislation could land violators in jail for 60 days, and Alabama and Mississippi‘s laws leave the door open for a prison term of up to three months.
These don’t hold a candle to what Diaz is proposing. When was the last time you heard of someone going to jail for the best part of a House term just for selling a bit of food?
Anti-cultivated-meat legislation is getting out of hand
Diaz’s isn’t the only bill against cultivated meat in Arizona. His colleague Quang Nguyen has introduced HB 2672, which doesn’t call for an outright ban, but rather a labelling requirement. Under this proposal, cultivated meat products will be allowed to be sold in the state only if they have a label stating: “This product is derived from cultivated cells.”
“All I want to do is to make sure is that there’s some level of transparency,” said Nguyen. “As a consumer, I should be able to see what I’m buying.”
An immigrant from Vietnam, he has a more pragmatic approach to the issue, believing that cultivated meat does have a place in the food system if it can be economically produced. “I don’t think if I were growing up in Vietnam [and] you put a piece of steak in front of me, I don’t think I would go: ‘Hey, where did this come from?’” he said.
Nguyen says he is advocating for an informed choice, although it’s not his first attempt at this restriction. He had introduced a similar bill back in 2024, which never made it to a Senate vote.
Another Republican Representative, David Marshall, had proposed a measure to ban the sale of cultivated meat (for both humans and pets) in 2024, adding that any business adversely affected (read: cattle ranchers) by the trade of these products could see damages of up to $100,000. His bill didn’t get a hearing in the Senate.
Montana, Indiana, Nebraska, and Texas have also outlawed the sale of cultivated meat. And this month, a new bill in Virginia is eyeing labelling restrictions on these proteins, and a proposal in South Dakota is aiming to impose a 10-year ban.
These measures aren’t without risk, as Florida and Texas have found. Both states have been sued by cultivated meat companies over their bans, with judges allowing the cases to go ahead despite an attempt by the states to throw them out.
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