House and Senate representatives in Mississippi have unanimously passed a bill to ban the sale of cultivated meat in the state, which is on the way to the governor’s desk now.

Sell cultivated meat, go to jail.

Mississippi has followed Florida and Alabama to become the third US state to pass a bill that would ban people from producing or selling cultivated meat within its borders.

The House of Representatives – where the bill was first introduced – voted 116-0 in favour of the legislation (with four absentees) earlier this week, sending the bill to Governor Tate Reeves’s desk for final approval.

Unless Reeves vetoes the bill, selling these proteins in Mississippi could land you a misdemeanour charge with a $500 fine, or even a jail term of up to three months. But the governor, who signed legislation prohibiting cultivated meat from being labelled as meat back in 2019 – when no such product had been federally approved for sale – is likely to sign this latest bill into law too.

Cultivated meat opposition misguided

The bill was introduced in January by two Republican representatives, Bill Pigott and Lester Carpenter. Pigott, a beef and dairy farmer, has long been an opponent of alternative protein. He introduced a bill to restrict how these products are labelled in 2019, which was unsuccessful and preceded the one eventually signed by Governor Reeves.

Speaking to the New York Times that year, he said: “The fake, lab-produced meat is a little bit more of a science fiction-type deal that concerns me more.”

Unlike similar bills in several other states, Pigott and Carpenter’s HB 1006 passed through the legislature without any opposition. Lawmakers in both the House and the Senate were unanimous in their view that beef derived from animal cells and grown in bioreactors should not be sold in the state. Under the bill, retailers that sell cultivated meat could have their licence revoked.

The move was supported by Andy Gispon, Mississippi’s agricultural commissioner, another long-term critic of cultivated meat. In July last year, he called it a “science experiment”, declaring: “I don’t know about you, but I want my steak to come from farm-raised beef, not a petri dish from a lab.”

He wasn’t shy about the reasons behind his support of a ban: the state’s livestock industry. “We know that American farmers are the true conservationists. Throughout the process of raising an animal, all the way to slaughter, animals must be treated humanely,” he said.

“Farmers and ranchers know more than anyone that their livelihood depends on the way they work their land and treat their livestock,” Gispon added, though his comment ignores the fact that most of the inputs needed to cultivate animal cells into meat come from farms.

Cultivated meat industry weathering the storm

Mississippi’s bill is nothing new. More than 20 states have tried to ban or restrict cultivated meat in recent years, and most have failed to get anywhere. The anti-cultivated-meat rhetoric has grown louder in the last year, as some Americans take to the carnivore diet, others become apprehensive of ultra-processed foods, and public figures like Elon Musk proclaim steak and eggs as the ideal breakfast

Meanwhile, investors are flocking away from the sector, with startups receiving 40% less capital in 2024, followed by a 75% plunge in 2023. Some startups have struggled to stay afloat, and others have made adjustments to their workforce.

Downturn or not, the industry appears prepared to fight the burgeoning sector. “Cell-based meats are not expected to be on grocery stores any time soon, but we must be vigilant and proactive rather than getting caught asleep at the wheel,” Gispon wrote last year.

It may come as a surprise to him that Californian startup Mission Barns has landed a deal to roll out bacon and meatballs made from its cultivated pork fat at Sprouts Farmers Market. It received a ‘no questions’ letter from the US Food and Drug Administration earlier this month, the first such regulatory approval in the country since 2023.

That year, it was Eat Just and Upside Foods that had secured the green light for their cultivated chicken products. The latter has brought a lawsuit alleging Florida’s ban is unconstitutional and is pursuing federal regulatory clearance for a second product this year.

Although legislators in states including South Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, Georgia have brought similar bills into consideration this year, others have faced setbacks. South Dakota’s HB 1109 failed to pass through the Senate, as did Wyoming’s HB 0168. Nebraska’s LB 246, meanwhile, has faced pushback from farmers and ranchers, who bemoaned that the effort would stifle competition in a free market.

It’s not the first instance of the meat industry hitting back against lawmakers claiming to protect them with these bills. Florida’s law received criticism from the country’s oldest and largest trade association, which represents 95% of the US’s meat output.

In a letter sent to Governor Ron DeSantis in March 2024, the North American Meat Institute called the ban “bad public policy”. “These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, emphasising the importance of consumer choice.

The post Unanimous Vote: Mississippi Becomes Third US State to Pass Bill to Ban Cultivated Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

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Californian food tech startup Mission Barns has become the third cultivated meat firm to receive regulatory approval in the US, with a planned rollout at Sprouts and Bay Area restaurant group Fiorella.

Mission Barns has earned US regulatory approval to sell its cultivated pork fat in the US, after securing a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday.

It is the third company to have received the green light to sell cultivated meat in the US – after fellow Californian firms Upside Foods and Eat Just in 2022 and 2023, respectively – and the first to be cleared to sell cultivated pork anywhere in the world.

The cell-cultured fat will be mixed with plant-based ingredients in Italian-style meatballs and applewood-smoked bacon, which will be debuted at San Francisco restaurant group Fiorella and Sprouts Farmers Market – marking the first time cultivated meat will be sold in a US supermarket.

According to its letter, the FDA “did not identify a basis” to conclude that Mission Barns’s process would result in substances or microorganisms that would adulterate the food.

“We have no questions at this time regarding Mission Barns’ conclusion that foods comprised of or containing cultured pork cell material resulting from the production process […] are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods,” the agency wrote, concluding a consultation process that began in May 2022 and underwent 18 amendments.

Before it is officially launched, Mission Barns would require approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its pilot plant and product labelling, in addition to the FDA letter.

The FDA approval comes during a period of turbulence for the cultivated meat industry, which has faced both financial and political challenges in the US – over 20 states have attempted to ban or restrict these proteins, and two of them have been successful. And with Robert F Kennedy as health secretary, there have been suggestions that the regulatory pathway for cultivated meat is now harder to chart.

New bioreactors a precursor to large-scale facility

Founded in 2018 by CEO Eitan Fischer, previously the cultivated meat head at Eat Just, Mission Barns uses belly fat cells from domestic Yorkshire pigs and grows them in bioreactors to make cultivated pork fat for hybrid meats like bacon, meatballs, pepperoni and chorizo.

It has a pilot plant in the Bay Area that can “produce enough product to supply a handful of restaurants and retailers”, according to Bianca Lê, head of special projects and external affairs at Mission Barns.

She had hinted about the startup’s approval and market entry plans in an interview with Green Queen in October, revealing: “We have a number of exciting partnerships confirmed with major US grocery stores, restaurants and food distributors who we have partnered with to sell our products.”

The company had developed a novel bioreactor that makes a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector, making cultivated meat production more efficient, easier to scale, and cheaper. Its appliance recreates the same adherent growth conditions inside an animal’s body, and can cultivate both muscle and fat cells, or tissue, from any species.

It is now looking to build a commercial-scale manufacturing facility. “Our current plan involves having bioreactors with working volumes in the tens of thousands of litres at commercial scale, when we’ll be outputting tens of millions of pounds of final product per year,” explained Lê.

Mission Barns is among a number of companies taking the cultivated fat route, which is seen as a more viable way to commercialise cell-cultured meat in the medium term. This includes Hoxton Farms, Steakholder Foods, Genuine Taste, and Mosa Meat (which has applied for approval in the EU).

“Consumers won’t eat food that isn’t absolutely delicious, which is why we chose to pursue a fat-first approach,” explained Fischer. “Not only is fat the main driver of flavour and juiciness, but it is also less costly and faster to produce than lean meat.”

He added: “We believe in giving consumers more choice – people looking for delicious, healthy, and responsibly produced meat are excited to try our products. By advancing cultivated meat production, we are helping to create a more resilient and reliable food system and reinforcing American leadership in food innovation.”

A win for cultivated meat amid political upheaval

According to a scientific memo published by the FDA, Mission Barns’s ingredient has similar unsaturated and saturated fatty acid content to conventional pork fat, and no trans fats. The agency said it will conduct another inspection after the company begins commercial production to “help ensure that potential risks are being managed and that the food is safe and not adulterated”.

Only a handful of firms have been able to climb the regulatory ladder to be cleared to sell cultivated meat globally – Mission Barns is only the sixth. Aside from Upside Foods and Eat Just, the list comprises Aleph Farms (in Israel), Vow (in Singapore and Hong Kong), and Meatly (in the UK). Regulators in the EU, Switzerland, Australia and Thailand are evaluating applications too, and judging from its inventory, the US FDA seems to have received at least five others.

Cultivated meat is undergoing a trough of disillusionment. After VCs pumped $1.3B into the category in 2021, investment has dipped dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $137M, according to Net Zero Insights data obtained by the Good Food Institute. It has forced some cultivated meat startups to shut down, and others to make cutbacks.

At the same time, a host of legislative efforts to ban or restrict cultivated meat in the US and Europe are ongoing. Italy decided to ban these proteins in 2023 (before other EU attempts were thwarted), while Florida and Alabama followed suit last year. Several states have floated similar bills in the current legislative session, though some have hit a snag, mirroring the fate of bills introduced in a number of other states over the last two years.

“Unlike other meat production, cultivated meat has federal regulatory oversight by both the FDA and USDA,” the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, a cellular agriculture trade group, said in a statement.

“As more companies progress through this rigorous regulatory pathway, the United States has an opportunity to be a global leader in the emerging industry. American-made cultivated meat and seafood will create high-skilled jobs throughout the value chain, enhance US food security, and expand consumer choice [by] filling gaps in supply shortages,” it added.

Fiorella co-founder Brandon Gillis also touched upon the “vulnerability of our global food supply chain”, which has impacted the restaurant’s ability to source ingredients and increased menu prices: “I’ve been keeping tabs on the cultivated meat industry as a potential solution, and after meeting with Mission Barns and tasting its products, I wanted to make sure we created a partnership for this historic moment.”

The post Mission Barns Gets FDA Approval to Sell Cultivated Pork in US Supermarkets & Restaurants appeared first on Green Queen.

This post was originally published on Green Queen.