The culture wars over cultivated meat continue, with a House Representative in Illinois introducing a bill to ban these foods in the state.

And it goes on.

Two months after Florida’s ban on cultivated meat came into effect, and a month before one goes live in Alabama, Illinois has joined a number of other states to try and outlaw these proteins.

House Representative Chris Miller, a third-generation cattle farmer, has introduced HB 5872, a bill to make the sale, manufacture or distribution of cultivated meat a Class C misdemeanour.

It means that if you sell cultivated meat, you’ll be treated the same way as you would if you possessed less than 2.5g of marijuana, assaulted someone, or left a firearm in your house that could easily be accessed by a minor. The penalty can result in 30 days of jail time, and/or $1,500 in fines.

“Agriculture is big business in Illinois, and we don’t need fake meat laboratories creating a highly expensive product that tries to replicate real meat,” said Miller. “Illinois farmers know what they’re doing, and they do it well.”

Rep Miller relies on misinformation to back bill

Miller’s bill, which hasn’t been referred to any of the committees yet, calls cultivated meat “a threat to the health, safety, and welfare” of Illinois residents.

A press release on the Representative’s website explains that HB 5872 was introduced as a response to “growing concerns from the notion of replacing real meat with laboratories”, and argued that it would protect “individual’s health, farmland, and agricultural products”.

Let’s break that down. First, cultivated meat poses no health risks – if it did, the USDA and the FDA wouldn’t have deemed it safe to be sold for human consumption, as they did for Upside Foods’ and Eat Just’s chicken products last year. In fact, cultivated meat takes away any concerns about antibiotics or bacterial contamination (like E coli).

Next, to make cultivated meat, you need sugars, minerals, and other inputs, which are agricultural products. Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food initiative, told Green Queen in June: “This is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways.”

And finally, the claim that this is a threat to farmland is laughable at best – research has shown that if produced by renewable energy, cultivated meat uses 90% less land than conventional beef. It has also been found to be three times more efficient at turning crops into meat than even the “most efficient” livestock.

“The ideology behind cultivating animal cells to improve carbon emissions is mind-blowing,” said Miller, with complete disregard for the misinformation he was spewing. Explaining how cultivated meat is made, his announcement took inspiration from an account of Upside Foods’ process by Wired. The publication revealed that instead of producing its meat in bioreactors, the Californian startup was at the time primarily relying on plastic roller bottles.

Miller, however, contorted the two to say that cultivated meat is produced in bioreactors, and employees “grow sheets of tissue in plastic flasks, called roller bottles, and combine them to create larger pieces of chicken or beef”. He’s also using one company’s process as a yardstick for the entire industry.

It highlights a startling reality: policymakers are trying to suppress consumer choice by outlawing food without actually knowing how it’s truly made. Alabama’s bill was also similarly built on misinformation.

It’s all about politics

“Here in Illinois, farmers work hard to raise cattle and produce some of the finest meat on the market,” said Miller. In January alone, a local company recalled nearly 7,000 lbs of raw ground beef thought to be contaminated with E. coli.

“My legislation would protect farmers and the high-quality products they help produce to feed families across the nation,” Miller added, regurgitating an argument made by almost everyone who’s tried to ban cultivated meat.

Legal challenges against cultivated meat have become a trend in the US, particularly among Republicans. But for all the talk about protecting the state’s animal agriculture industry, most of these efforts come from legislators who themselves are livestock farmers, or belong to a family of meat producers. So really, they’re looking out for themselves.

Only last week, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order prohibiting state agencies from procuring cultivated meat, ordering contractors to not discriminate against conventional meat producers, and calling for restrictions on how cultivated meat is labelled in stores – despite it never appearing on any supermarket shelf in the US.

Pillen, part of a pork family empire in Nebraska, now wants to ban cultivated meat in the 2025 legislative session. Similar efforts are ongoing in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

Illinois was set to be the site for Upside Foods’ industrial-scale manufacturing plant before the project was put on pause. But now, the company has sued Florida for its ban, calling it unconstitutional. Whether such pushback would deter Miller – who has previously been censured by his colleagues for attending Donald Trump’s rally that preceded January 6 – only time will tell.

But as November 5 draws closer, Donald Trump incoherently tries to talk about plant-based bacon, and his running mate JD Vance denounces ‘soy boys’, the Republican strategy seems to be clear: nothing is more American than red meat, no matter how bad it is for you or the planet.

Let’s cut the crap and call these bans what they really are: political stunts hoping to sway voters with misinformation and no regard for their own freedom to choose what they eat.

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Nebraska governor Jim Pillen has signed an executive order with a view to ban cultivated meat in 2025 – and he did not mince his words about consumers’ freedom of choice, or Bill Gates.

Despite Ron DeSantis’ Florida being sued for banning cultivated meat, his Nebraskan counterpart remains unfazed, initiating a “a full-blown attack on lab-grown meats and fake meat”.

Those are governor Jim Pillen’s words, after signing an executive order putting several restrictions on cultivated meat, and has announced his intention to ban these products in the next legislative session in 2025.

At Oak Barn Beef, a family-owned meat shop in West Point, the governor was flanked by the owner of the store, a livestock farmer running for office, and the head of the state’s agricultural department (whose family owns a beef farm), when he approved three measures to protect animal agriculture from the “extraordinary, crazy views out there that there’s going to be different ways to feed the planet”.

And he took a jibe at Bill Gates, who has invested in a number of alternative protein companies, including California’s Upside Foods, the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Florida. “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’re being proactive and making sure that silly things aren’t happening, because they are happening on the coasts,” Pillen added. Until a few months ago, two restaurants – one on each coast – were serving cultivated meat, after Upside Foods and fellow Californian startup Eat Just received approval from the USDA and FDA.

The governor, whose family owns a major pork farm in the state, was very forceful in his wording. “If there are Nebraskans that want to buy lab-grown meat, good for them. They’re just not going to do it in Nebraska,” he said.

Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen received and signed the executive order yesterday, which means it is now in effect.

How Nebraska’s executive order stifles cultivated meat

Pillen announced three separate measures to block the progress of the cultivated meat industry. First, he has prohibited state agencies from procuring these proteins

Then, he has mandated state contractors to ensure they don’t “discriminate against natural-meat producers” in favour of alternative proteins.

And finally, he’s asked the agriculture department to make a rule that requires any cultivated meat sold in stores to be clearly labelled separately and placed away from what he called “real meat”. For the record, cultivated meat uses cells from real animals, so it is ‘real meat’ – just, you know, without the slaughter and the pollution and the land use and the water consumption.

Sherry Vinton, the aforementioned director of the agriculture department, said her agency will develop standards to determine when alternative proteins – including plant-based meats – are being falsely labelled or misadvertised. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

“Without these regulations, people can be misled, they can be deceived into buying a product that they didn’t intend on buying,” she said. Some would say that’s insulting people’s intelligence.

“We are going to get very aggressive and make sure Nebraskans are not going to get confused by how meat is labelled,” Pillen said. “People are not going to be able to come into Nebraska and sell product that has meat on it that’s not meat.”

The executive order suggested that blended meats – which combine conventionally raised meat with plant-based ingredients or cultivated cells – “have the potential to confuse consumers”.

The document also included a bogus claim that cultivated meat’s climate footprint is “significantly higher”, likely from a widely panned UC Davis study from 2023, which has become the go-to root of misinformation around cultivated meat.

But to the contrary, peer-reviewed research has shown that when produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat can account for 92% fewer emissions, 94% less air pollution, and 90% less land use than conventional beef. Another study estimated that a shift to cellular agriculture combined with green energy could cut annual emissions by 52% and reduce the amount of land used by traditional farming methods by 83%.

A familiar – and tired – rhetoric

Pillen said that 95% of livestock producers in Nebraska are family-owned, and that he wants to keep it that way. This is the same rhetoric used by DeSantis as well as Alabama governor Kay Ivey, whose state has also banned cultivated meat (which will come into effect on October 1).

The Nebraska governor aims to follow in his fellow Republicans’ footsteps. He promised to reciprocate this legislation in his state in May – when the bans by Florida and Alabama were announced.

“The fake-meat, petri-dish-meat folks, they’re not going to have a place in Nebraska, just mark that down on your calendar,” he said at the time. “It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and fight and defend Nebraska, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Yesterday, Pillen said he’ll ask policymakers to propose and prioritise a ban on cultivated meat next year. “We can etch it in stone so nobody has a chance,” he suggested, calling these proteins “an attack on our values”.

“We are the beef state,” he added. The problem is, agriculture is the largest source of Nebraska’s emissions, contributing to 42% of the state’s climate footprint, according to the US EPA. And beef production alone accounts for 55% of this share, and 23.7% of the state’s overall emissions.

That seemingly doesn’t faze Pillen. “Nebraska farmers and ranchers, like those here today, are committed to producing the best food products anywhere,” he said. “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.”

But this idea that cultivated meat is a threat to farmers is a fallacy. As Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food scheme, told Green Queen in June: “Everyone gets kind of very nervous about cultivated [meat]… thinking that it’s completely detached from farming. Well, the [culture] media are sugars, and all sorts of minerals and things that are coming from crops, and they’re farmed goods.”

He added: “So this is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways. And generally using farmed products that are more profitable and highly sustainable in the way they’re produced.”

Nebraska leaders miss the irony

Lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have all introduced similar proposals to thwart cultivated meat. As Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti put it, these types of bans are “a harbinger of what might come when a small set of people try to make laws and rules” on what Americans can eat.

So it makes it even more depressingly funny that Jeanne Reigle, the legislative candidate supporting Pillen at the signing, said – completely unironically – that what keeps her up at night and makes her fear for American children’s future is that the “government could get involved and have more control over this new so-called ‘food’”.

As for Pillen, it’s unclear whether he really feels so deeply about this issue, or it’s more a PR stunt – after all, it’s become almost fashionable in Republican states to restrict new businesses hoping to find a way to feed America when meat inevitably goes into short supply. Given Republicans’ staggering lack of belief in climate change or willingness to embrace cultivated meat, this is nothing new.

But the Nebaraska governor wants it to be. He wants you to know that this is “a big deal”. Whether a ban actually happens – or any such bills die down eventually – only time will tell.

Should Pillen really be focusing on products that have never been sold in Nebraska and wouldn’t have for quite a few years anyway? Or should he be putting his energy into reducing the dangerously high nitrate levels in his hog farm’s water supply, which would also protect the health of the farmers and consumers he says he cares about?

I’ll let Nebraskans decide (because he won’t).

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California’s Upside Foods has filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida over its ban on cultivated meat, and is asking the federal court for an injunction. Here’s what happened, and what’s to come.

Forty-two days after Florida decided to outlaw the sale and production of cultivated meat, the state is now facing a lawsuit over the ban.

Californian cultivated chicken startup Upside Foods has filed a legal complaint in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, calling Florida’s SB 1084 “unconstitutional”.

Announced on May 1 by governor Ron DeSantis, the legislation made it a second-degree misdemeanour to manufacture, transport, commercialise or sell cultivated meat within Florida’s borders. Penalties included up to $5,000 in fines, 60 days in jail, and businesses having their licenses revoked.

“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate,” DeSantis said at the time, labelling it a battle against “the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals”.

But Paul Sherman, senior attorney at the Institute of Justice, which is leading the case for Upside Foods, said the ban had “nothing to do with protecting public health and safety”. “Florida’s law is a transparent example of economic protectionism. It was passed following intense lobbying by cattle interests, and its protectionist purpose was no secret,” he said in a press conference.

So what are the grounds for Upside Foods’ lawsuit? And what happens next? Here’s everything you need to know.

Why Upside Foods is challenging Florida’s ban

As one of two companies approved to sell cultivated meat in the US, Upside Foods has been offering Americans a taste of its chicken for over a year now. What started as a residency on the menu of Dominique Crenn’s Bar Crenn has since evolved into tastings at various public events throughout the US.

These included the Industry Only Potluck in Las Vegas, TED Countdown Dilemma: Food in New York, and South by Southwest (SXSW) in Texas. In fact, four days before Florida’s ban, the startup hosted a Freedom of Food Pop-Up in Miami, in partnership with local chef Mika Leon.

But this wasn’t the only event Upside Foods was planning in Florida. It had teamed up with local chefs to showcase its cultivated chicken at the Art Basel fair in Miami in December, and host a tasting at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in the state capital next February.

The chef who was working on the Art Basel activation had also planned to offer the cultivated chicken at her restaurant, aiming to make it available to diners on a limited basis by the first quarter of 2025. Upside Foods had additionally identified chefs in Miami and Tallahassee who were interested in collaborating with the brand.

“Florida is the third-largest economy in the US, which is why every CPG sees Florida as an important market,” Sean Edgett, chief legal officer at Upside Foods, tells Green Queen. “We know that ‘tasting is believing’ – giving consumers in every market the opportunity to try our product is hugely important to our future.”

He adds: “We had great feedback from our June 2023 Miami pop-up with Chef Mika Leon and hope to be able to continue that partnership in the future. However, for now, all plans for Florida are on hold.”

“Under the ban, tasting events like these are a crime. If Upside were to distribute its product in Florida, it would expose itself and the local chefs and food establishments with which it wishes to partner to civil and criminal penalties as well as the embargo and destruction of its products,” the complaint reads.

Upside Foods argues that the ban blocked “critical and irreplaceable opportunities” to grow the nascent cultivated meat market: “Upside is enduring ongoing harm in the form of lost revenue, missed business and promotional opportunities, reputational damage, and loss of consumer goodwill.”

The legislation also makes it harder for the startup to partner with restaurant groups. “Florida is the headquarters of the world’s largest full-service restaurant company [Darden Restaurants] and one of the largest quick-service restaurants in the country [Burger King], both of which are key long-term customer targets of Upside’s,” the plaintiff notes.

What makes Florida’s ban unconstitutional?

The Institute of Justice has invoked two provisions of the US Constitution: the Commerce Clause and the Supremacy Clause.

Under the Commerce Clause, the federal government has exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce. States have limited power to interfere with or discriminate against here. “Florida’s ban does just that,” argues Institute of Justice attorney Suranjan Sen, also counsel to Upside Foods.

The state violates the Commerce Clause because its “intended purpose and practical effect is to shield in-state commercial interests from interstate competition”, he explains.

“Floridians have the right to enjoy a free-flowing market of interstate goods and services; they have a right to make an informed choice as to whether these products are right for themselves and their families; and Florida cannot shield itself from the interstate market without good reason,” Sen tells Green Queen.

“There is no such good reason here, in part because these products are safe to eat, and they are heavily regulated and inspected by the USDA and FDA – just like conventional meat.”

And the decision by two federal departments to allow Upside Foods to sell products in the interstate market supersedes any contrary state laws, as outlined in the Supremacy Clause.

“Congress long ago passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act, which grant the USDA and FDA the authority to set up a nationwide regulatory regime for meat products, a regime that expressly preempts state laws to the contrary (because 50 different regulatory regimes would frustrate a nationwide market),” explains Sen.

Introducing different ingredient or manufacturing requirements is therefore prevented by these acts. “Essentially, the federal government has said that cultivated chicken cells produced at Upside’s facilities can be used in poultry products, and the state of Florida is saying that they can’t. The state simply doesn’t have that power,” Sherman added in the press conference.

Who are the defendants?

The defendants in the lawsuit are Florida agriculture commissioner Wilton Simpson, attorney general Ashley Moody, as well as state attorneys Jack Campbell (from the Second Judicial Circuit), Bruce Bartlett (Sixth Judicial Circuit), Andrew Bain (Ninth Judicial Circuit), and Katherine Fernandez Rundle (Eleventh Judicial Circuit).

“The lawsuit is ridiculous,” Simpson said in a statement. “Lab-grown ‘meat’ is not proven to be safe enough for consumers and it is being pushed by a liberal agenda to shut down farms. Food security is a matter of national security, and our farmers are the first line of defence.”

He added: “As Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture, I will fight every day to protect a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply. States are the laboratory of democracy, and Florida has the right to not be a corporate guinea pig. Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.”

“The states simply do not have the power to wall themselves off from products that have been approved by the USDA and the FDA,” Sherman said when asked to respond to Simpson’s comments. “And if consumers don’t like the idea of cultivated meat, there’s a simple solution. They don’t have to eat it, but they can’t make that decision for other consumers.”

Uma Valeti, co-founder and CEO of Upside Foods, stressed that cultivated meat is a “complement, not competition” to conventional meat. The current methods of meat production are unsustainable – there’s simply not enough land, water or resources to meet the needs of a 10-billion-strong population.

“What cultivated meat is doing is putting choice of having animal-based foods on the table and not having to ration in the future,” Valeti said.

Recalling the legislative debate that led to the ban, he said it was a “very surreal moment”, likening it to what the world looked like hundreds of years ago, when people challenged “nearly every transformative innovation that came into the world, and innovators had to fight and fight and fight”.

“I felt like I was watching an old boys’ club trying to have a privileged group protected and protecting an incumbent industry. I just couldn’t believe that was happening at this day and age.”

Are there any legal precedents for Upside Foods’ case?

Yes, there are. In 2011’s National Meat Association v Harris, the US Supreme Court unanimously invoked the Supremacy Clause to strike down a California law aiming to restrict meatpackers and processors from handling nonambulatory pigs (who can’t bear weight on their legs or walk without support).

This legislation was found to be “exceeding or conflicting with requirements under the Federal Meat Inspection Act”, notes Sen.

Meanwhile, in 1977’s Hunt v Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, the Supreme Court invoked the Commerce Clause to abolish a North Carolina legislation that required apples to be sold with no grade identification other than USDA grading.

While neutral on the surface, this law “operated to disfavour apples from other states” that could boast grades higher than the UDSA grades.

What about Alabama’s ban, and what happens next?

The Institute of Justice is asking the court to declare that Florida’s ban violates the constitutional clauses, and grant an injunction preventing the state from enforcing it.

While the lawsuit moves forward, the Institute of Justice will be filing for a preliminary injunction to allow Upside Foods to continue to sell its cultivated chicken in Florida. “The rules state that we must first confer with Florida’s attorneys, which we hope to do this week,” says Sen.

“Once we file that motion, the timeline will largely be in the judge’s hands. That said, the immediate impetus for the preliminary injunction would be so that Upside can host a tasting event in Miami this December at the Art Basel festival, so hopefully we should get a result by then,” he adds.

Just a week after Florida’s ban in May, neighbouring state Alabama also decided to outlaw cultivated meat, but this comes into effect on October 1. According to the legal filing, “officials in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia” have also introduced similar proposals.

“We see these types of bans as a harbinger of what might come when a small set of people try to make laws and rules on what common Americans and Floridians can eat,” said Upside Foods’ Valeti.

“Alabama’s ban is similarly unlawful, as are other efforts to kill a new and innovative industry for the sake of shielding entrenched in-state commercial interests,” says Sen. Since Florida’s law is already in place, the lawyers decided to challenge this first. But he says the Institute of Justice is “not averse to challenging other bans”.

He adds: “Alabama is in the same federal circuit court of appeals as Florida (the Eleventh Circuit). Therefore, the precedent from a victory in this case would likely apply to Alabama as well.”

Upside Foods is among the most well-capitalised startups in the cultivated meat sector, having raised $608M to date. But a lack of investment in the overall industry and two rounds of layoffs in 2024, combined with these legislative challenges, have dented progress.

However, while it has paused its plans for tastings in Florida for now, the company is planning on distributing its cultivated chicken at events in Los Angeles and Chicago next month.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Upside Foods’ Lawsuit Against Florida’s Cultivated Meat Ban appeared first on Green Queen.

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The US Department of Defense has withdrawn its call for funding applications to develop cultivated meat for military rations, following pressure from livestock lobby groups.

If you’ve never truly grasped the sheer power of the animal agriculture industry, buckle up.

The livestock lobby has put enough pressure on the US Department of Defense (DoD) – a body that oversees national security and the armed forces – for it to back down on efforts to make the military food system more sustainable.

The DoD has decided to revoke its call for funding proposals that would have seen small businesses and research organisations develop nutrient-dense, climate-friendly cultivated meat products for the US military.

It’s a direct result of lobbying from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a livestock group that has backed a host of legislative efforts to restrict the progress of alternative proteins. NCBA worked with seven Congress members to get the DoD to back down, all of whom belong to the Republican party.

What the DoD project was about

It all started in May, when the DoD published its call for proposals to develop sustainable food and materials and reduce emissions related to military operations via bioindustrial manufacturing.

It was put out under public-private biomanufacturing consortium BioMade’s Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) Project, with each project receiving between $500,000 and $2M. As part of the sustainable food focus, the DoD was looking for projects that would reduce the carbon footprint of food production and transportation.

“These could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilising one-carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell-culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein,” the document stated.

There were a host of other focus areas, from sidestream valorisation to carbon capture tech, but the focus fell squarely on cultivated meat. Almost immediately, there was backlash.

The NCBA put out a statement condemning the move in early June. “It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats,” its VP of government affairs, Ethan Lane, said.

“US cattle producers raise the highest-quality beef in the world, with the lowest carbon footprint – and American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultra-processed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor,” he added. “This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”

Conservative media runs riot on the move

The NCBA’s response was followed by a pile-on from a number of conservative media outlets. The Daily Mail called it “bizarre”, featuring comments made by a former Marine to another right-wing website, the Caller.

The Daily Signal – which was, until three days before the NCBA statement, part of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind the Project 2025 proposal in the US – ran an interview with the Center for Environment and Welfare. That might seem innocuous by the name, but that’s before you realise that it’s run by a long-term employee of Berman & Company, a PR group behind the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE).

Formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom, this is the same organisation that attacked Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods with a Super Bowl ad and deceptive marketing around ingredient lists. The new Center for Environment and Welfare has already run an attack ad on cultivated meat and created a website that features blatant disinformation about these proteins.

The Daily Signal interview went exactly as you’d expect – they questioned the “diversity quota” required for the DoD to “shell out cash”, compared immortalised cells to tumours, and cited a widely condemned UC Davis study to cloud over the climate impact of cultivated meat.

Hubbard also went on the Washington Free Beacon to paint soldiers as “guinea pigs” and call it a political, “anti-farmer” agenda. This was picked up by national newspapers like the Daily Express in the UK.

A cattle rancher represented by the NCBA, meanwhile, appeared on Fox News, slamming cultivated meat for being ultra-processed and countless ingredients (which isn’t the case), and purporting the naturalness of his single-ingredient meat (which isn’t the case either).

DoD gives in to pressure from cattle groups and Congress

All of this to say, the NCBA has been successful in its efforts. In a statement earlier this week, it confirmed that the DoD is now no longer pursuing cultivated meat project proposals.

“After weeks of engaging with Congress and speaking out against this plan, we are thrilled to have DoD confirmation that lab-grown protein is not on the menu for our nation’s service members,” said NCBA president Mark Eisele, a rancher from Wyoming. “These men and women make the greatest sacrifices every day in service to our country and they deserve high-quality, nutritious, and wholesome food like real beef grown by American farmers and ranchers.”

Sigrid Johannes, senior director of government affairs at the group, added: “There’s a big difference between industrial or defence applications and the food we put in our bodies. US farmers and ranchers are more than capable of meeting the military’s need for high-quality protein.”

In a sign of just how influential the association’s lobbying was, the NCBA named seven Congress members and thanked them “for quickly acting to ensure that only the most wholesome and unprocessed products end up on the plate for our servicemembers”.

These were House Representatives Don Bacon, Zach Nunn, Warren Davidson and Mary Miller, and Senators Roger Marshall, Cynthia Lummis and Deb Fischer. Davidson is currently the sponsor of a bill that looks to ban federal funding of cultivated meat, an evolution of similar bills previously proposed by Fisher and Marshall. The latter is also the sponsor of a bill looking to ban deceptive labelling practices” on plant-based meat products, which has been endorsed by the NCBA.

While it’s important not to draw partisan lines – especially since restrictive bills with bipartisan support exist too – it’s notable that all these lawmakers belong to the Republican Party. The two states that have banned cultivated meat in the US, Florida and Alabama, are also led by the GOP. And a recent survey has shown that Democrats are far more likely to have a net-positive opinion on cultivated meat than Republicans.

The DoD’s reversal comes a week after a wide-ranging report highlighted the deceptive tactics used by the animal agriculture industry to influence public policy. One prominent example was the US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack’s ties with the dairy sector, which have helped cattle companies influence some of the biggest policies affecting the sector, like the Global Methane Pledge and the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Department of Defence did not immediately respond to Green Queen’s request for comment.

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French cultivated foie gras startup Gourmey has become the first cultivated meat company to apply for regulatory approval in the EU, with dossiers also filed in four other markets.

Gourmey has applied for regulatory approval of its cultivated duck in the European Union, Singapore, the US, the UK and Switzerland.

It marks the first application for cultivated meat in the EU, a major milestone for the industry. The cultivated duck will be used to make foie gras, a French delicacy inundated with animal welfare and environmental concerns.

The Parisian startup has filed dossiers with the European Commission and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the US Food and Drug Administration, the Singapore Food Agency, the UK Food Standards Agency, and the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO).

It plans to offer its cultivated foie gras to chefs and restaurants by 2026. “We look forward to continuing to work closely with the regulatory authorities to ensure full compliance with safety requirements throughout these procedures,” said Gourmey co-founder and CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest.

“We are confident that our products will meet these highly demanding standards, so that everyone who wants to can enjoy new gourmet experiences all around the world.”

So far, only Singapore, the US, Israel and the UK have approved the sale of cultivated meat. The EU’s regulatory framework is regarded as the “gold standard in novel food safety and risk assessment”, according to the startup.

“I am thrilled to see member company Gourmey be the first to submit a dossier to the EU and it comes at the perfect time,” said Robert E Jones, president of industry association Cellular Agriculture Europe. “Europe is in danger of losing its competitive edge on a home-grown innovation and we face serious challenges in the food system that can be helped by diversifying protein sources.”

“It’s fantastic to see the first application to sell cultivated meat in the EU has been submitted,” said Seth Roberts, senior policy manager at alterntaive protein think tank the Good Food Institute Europe. “This demonstrates that food innovation can coexist alongside our culinary traditions, providing consumers with foie gras made in a way that could reduce environmental impacts and animal welfare concerns, support investment and provide future-proof jobs.”

A future-facing solution to a controversial tradition

Founded in 2019 by Morin-Forest, Jérôme Caron and Antoine Davydoff, Gourmey has so far raised €65M via public and private investments. This includes a then-record €48M Series A round in 2022, which was used to open a first-of-its-kind 46,000 sq ft cultivated meat hub and commercial production facility in Paris.

It describes itself as France’s first cultivated meat company, and has taken on an iconic – and hugely problematic – food.

Foie gras is up there with caviar and bluefin tuna as the world’s most exclusive and highly prized food items. But each comes with its problems. Foie gras is associated with the force-feeding of geese and ducks, which can damage the livers of the birds and lead to a painful disease called hepatic lipidosis.

Such animal welfare concerns have prompted over a dozen countries to actually ban foie gras, including India, Argentina, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey. Even in France, three-quarters of consumers are uncomfortable with the force-feeding involved.

And that’s all before you consider the climate impact of raising birds and growing enormous amounts of corn to (over)feed them, just to slaughter them for human consumption in the end. Gourmey’s version, meanwhile, takes 80% less water, land surface and carbon dioxide emissions and uses 45% less energy to make.

Still, it continues to have its proponents. As we speak, it’s being served at the Olympics in Paris, despite what has been touted as the “most sustainable” Games ever, because it’s serving 60% meatless food. This has sparked widespread protests by animal activists, including prominent figures like actress Kate Mara.

Feeding the premium culinary market

While most cultivated meat companies have focused on more common meat products like beef and chicken, there is an argument for targeting higher-end foods like foie gras.

Foie gras, of course, is no novel food, but this iteration of the product is. And at a time when costs remain prohibitively high for cultivated meat, targeting the premium end of the market makes more sense financially. It also provides a solution – and contrast – to a country whose gastronomic identity has relied on ingredients mire don controversy, and whose lawmakers have been seeking to ban cultivated meat.

“The premium segment has always been at the forefront of food trends, where the most exciting innovations occur,” said Morin-Forest. “We are witnessing thrilling commercial traction for our first product in many regions where chefs want to keep serving high-quality foie gras.

He added: “Starting with haute-cuisine acts as a catalyst for our future product launches, with chefs serving as the best ambassadors to introduce new product categories to consumers and drive sustainability.”

There are other examples of companies targeting premium meats in this space too. Take Australia’s Vow, which makes cultivated quail as part of a parfait. It became the fourth company to be approved for sale earlier this year, after receiving the green light from the Singapore Food Agency.

“By changing the process of production, rather than the food itself, you are asking consumers to change their behaviour for the benefit of the planet alone. Despite what we’d like to believe, those externalities don’t matter as much as we think to a vast majority of consumers when it comes to purchasing,” its founder George Peppou told Green Queen in April.

“The only way for us to change our behaviour is to offer new foods that consumers choose selfishly. That’s why Vow is different, because we innovate instead of imitating, and therefore offer something that consumers will selfishly choose, because it is deliberately different.”

A giant leap amid rising polarisation

The EU application is a landmark moment for the six-year-old startup, as well as the nascent industry it’s in. For years, this region has been the toughest regulatory nut to crack, thanks to an extremely complex and stringent novel food framework that drove many companies to explore other markets first.

Other EU players like Meatable, Mosa Meat and Vital Meat have all looked to Singapore, for example, which was the first country to give the all-clear. The US and Israel have approved cultivated meat for sale too, and earlier this month, even the UK – a former EU member that for so long continued to follow EU regulations – gave the go-ahead (for pets).

Aleph Farms has filed for approval in Switzerland and the UK too, while Vital Meat is also awaiting approval in Britain. Meanwhile, South Korea is now accepting applications after developing a framework earlier this year, for example, while India is establishing guidance for approvals as well.

Gourmey’s application in five markets is a major statement about its global ambitions. It has indicated that it will also be actively engaged in Asian countries like Japan and South Korea (in addition to Singapore), where consumers have displayed a willingness to try these foods.

The EU’s approval process will include a thorough and evidence-based assessment of the safety and nutritional value of cultivated meat, and is set to take at least 18 months. During risk management and the public consultation phase of the process, it also enables the consideration of the potential social, economic and environmental impacts of the food in question.

The EU Commission and member states play a role in the approvals process alongside scientific experts at the EFSA, which ensures that the authorisation retains the buy-in of all stakeholders. Once the EU approves a cultivated meat product, it can be sold across all 27 EU countries.

A recent survey of 16,000 citizens from 15 EU countries found that Europeans are largely in favour of cultivated meat if it passes safety assessments from food regulators, and a majority are willing to try the novel food.

One major challenge is the increasing politicisation of cultivated meat. Italy and the US states of Florida and Alabama have banned cultivated meat. Other countries and states are making similar moves, including France.

“There’s a lot of polarisation… we need to really have a science-based conversation and public dialogue, nothing that is too ideologically driven,” Morin-Forest told Politico. “These types of food will be part of the diets of the next years and as a European invention, [with] several European champions, we really need to preserve this technological sovereignty.”

“Diversifying protein production is crucial for sustaining food security and contributing to sustainability objectives such as decarbonisation and biodiversity,” he added. “Integrating cultivated food production into existing agrifood value chains provides a complementary protein source that will contribute to resilient food systems.”

This story has been updated as more details have been released.

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Dutch food tech startup Mosa Meat conducted the first public tasting of cultivated beef in the EU, another milestone for novel foods amid fierce debate in Europe.

Mosa Meat, the Dutch startup that produced the world’s first cultivated meat burger over a decade ago, hosted a public tasting of its cultivated beef at its test kitchen in Maastricht last week (July 15).

Convening Dutch cattle farmers, food product developers and industry representatives, it marked the first time public members tasted cultivated beef in the EU. It follows the Dutch government’s establishment of a Code of Practice last year, which paved the way for startups to conduct tastings of cultivated meat and seafood before being approved for sale in the EU.

The attendees tasted hybrid beef patties, which combined cultivated beef fat with a custom plant-based mix made in-house by Mosa Meat’s product development team. Much like conventional minced beef that has varying degrees of fat (80/20, 90/10, etc.), the company is still experimenting with the optimal proportion of cultivated fat and plant-based ingredients (which are already widely accepted as food-grade and safe to eat).

“We specifically evaluated the potential of cultivated beef fat as an ingredient in a blend with plant-based ingredients as we know it is responsible for the flavour, aromas, mouthfeel and even sizzle people love from beef,” said Maarten Bosch, co-founder and CEO of Mosa Meat, which is awaiting regulatory approval in Singapore.

“We’ve been able to conclude that our cultivated fat has a very positive impact on the product quality,” he said. “This means that in addition to the cultivated beef for which we have submitted a regulatory approval request in Singapore, we can also elevate the culinary experience of plant-based products and delight more beef lovers faster.”

The development comes just three months after fellow Dutch startup Meatable hosted the EU’s first cultivated meat tasting, serving its hybrid pork sausages to chefs, journalists, industry stakeholders and public officials.

Cultivated beef burger impresses taste-testers

Mosa Meat said the purpose of the tasting was to the market readiness of products and collect feedback from culinary experts for product development purposes. “We are delighted to finally share our burgers with experts outside of the company, so they can help us create the best burgers possible,” said Bosch.

“The burger really tasted like meat,” said one attendee. “Usually I don’t eat meat, but I miss the taste of meat a lot, and this is the way to ultimately add it back to my diet, I hope.”

Another added: “I thought the burger was delicious. It was juicy, nice and succulent.”

The tasting follows the company’s latest €40M ($42.4M) fundraising round in April, which was the largest investment in a cultivated meat company since November 2022. It took total investment in the company to over $135M, and is helping Mosa Meat scale up its production processes and accelerate its route to market.

In May 2023, the startup opened what it claims is currently the world’s largest cultivated meat facility in Maastricht. This “cultivated meat campus” is its fourth plant, expanding its footprint to 7,340 sq m (79,007 sq ft), and has a 1,000-litre bioreactor scale that can produce “tens of thousands of cultivated hamburgers”.

When Mosa Meat first unveiled a cultivated meat burger in 2013, the two proof-of-concept patties cost $330,000. Since then, the company has since managed to slash costs repeatedly. In 2020, it brought down the price of its own growth medium by 80-fold, and the following year, it reduced the cost of its fat medium cost by 66 times.

To further these efforts, it secured a €2M grant from the EU to cut production costs by 100-fold in 2021. And in 2023, it partnered with its investor Nutreco to create a cell feed supply chain and shift to food-grade amino acids to achieve this reduction without affecting yield.

While its exact production costs are not known, the company has indicated that these have continued to decline rapidly, and it’s confident that it will enter foodservice at a price point that works for chefs and restaurants.

Mosa Meat advocates for speed efficiency in EU novel food regulation

Mosa Meat’s beef is still undergoing evaluation by the Singapore Food Agency, which was the first regulator to clear cultivated meat for sale with Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken back in 2020. It has since greenlit cultivated quail made by Australia’s Vow.

But the original nine- to 12-month timeline Singapore has touted has been hard to realise for multiple applicants. Apart from Mosa Meat, it’s also assessing dossiers from Meatable, Aleph Farms and Vital Meat, among others.

Like others, Mosa Meat is planning to enter the market via foodservice too, allowing chefs to bring out the true potential of its cultivated beef when consumers first try it. This also allows breathing room to expand operations and meet the volume demands of retail contracts.

While it awaits the regulatory nod in Singapore, Mosa Meat will concurrently submit applications in other markets in 2024, and has highlighted the US, the EU, Switzerland and the UK as top targets. These regions have established regulatory frameworks and represent a billion consumers combined, which would allow the company to make a larger impact.

The UK just issued its (and Europe’s) first approval to cultivated pet food maker Meatly last week. But no company has so far received clearance in the EU, where the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has a complex and stringent framework, thanks in part to the fact that it has 27 member states.

“We embrace the robust nature of the Commission’s review because we know it is the gold standard in the world and will inspire broad consumer confidence,” Robert E Jones, VP of public affairs at Mosa Meat, told Green Queen. But he added: “There are some efficiencies that can be achieved in the speed at which dossiers are reviewed without sacrificing safety, and we continue to work with regulators on implementing those administrative reforms.”

One example of this is the EU’s updated guidance documents for novel foods, which reflects recent advancements in the sector and capitalise on the EFSA’s increased experience in assessing novel foods. The document is set to be published in September, and was built on multiple rounds of feedback by groups like Cellular Agriculture Europe. Jones, who is president of this trade association, said: “We see it as a step in the right direction and an indication that the EU is hearing our feedback about ways to improve efficiencies in the novel food process.”

Several other hiccups exist for cultivated meat. In the US, Florida and Alabama have banned cultivated meat, and a number of states are proposing similar measures. But these were preceded by Italy, which announced a ban last November, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. France, Romania and now Hungary are all thought to be mulling restrictions too – despite consumers largely expressing support for these foods.

“While some right-wing governments insist on inserting cultivated meat as a topic in their populist culture war, they are not representative of the vast majority of the European Union,” stated Jones. “The consensus among member states remains to be that innovation and conventional agriculture can coexist in order to boost European competitiveness and food security. I am confident that viewpoint will win the day.”

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With a change of government, the UK’s plans to shake and speed up its regulatory process for novel foods like cultivated meat could be derailed.

Now that the Conservatives have finally been voted out of office after 14 years, climate activists in the UK have breathed a sigh of relief.

Rishi Sunak’s net-zero U-turns and vows to authorise oil projects in the North Sea were deeply unpopular. Sir Kier Starmer’s government has immediately laid down its climate vision – it plans to stop using fossil fuels for electricity by 2030, for starters.

However, the new Labour administration may yet have a negative impact on the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) plans to overhaul its regulatory framework for novel foods, which include cultivated meat and precision-fermented products.

The UK has retained the EU’s regulatory process post-Brexit, which has created a massive backlog and made it virtually impossible for companies to get their products on the market. The Conservative government had viewed a departure from EU red tape as a positive for post-Brexit Britain, and had backed the FSA’s moves to make wholesale changes.

But the election came just as the food safety body’s work got underway, and now, “competing priorities” and concerns over the initial costs could jeopardise the proposals, FSA chair Susan Jebb told a behind-closed-doors meeting, according to the Grocer.

How the FSA plans to revamp its novel foods framework

Back in March, the FSA said it would create a new public register of regulated products, replacing the current system that requires the parliament to pass statutory instruments before they can be placed on the market.

The existing regulations added up to six months to the process, creating a huge backlog of over 470 applications for novel foods, facing up to a two-and-a-half-year waiting period. The FSA also sought to remove the requirement for products that have already been approved to reapply for clearance every 10 years.

Around the same time, it was revealed that the FSA was seeking £5M in government funding for labs to pilot a ‘sandbox’ testing project for novel proteins, and was in talks to collaborate with food companies and scientists for the same.

And by May, the department was also mulling a system of global cooperation that would involve a “sliding scale of international engagement” to clear the highly congested docket of applications and see cultivated meat and other foods be approved based on their track record in other markets, such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

All these efforts were meant to fast-track approval for startups like those involved in alternative protein. An FSA-commissioned report by Deloitte in 2023 found that speeding up novel foods regulation could help the UK meet its carbon reduction plans (the country has earmarked 2050 as its net-zero target).

“The board has been clear that overhauling the way we authorise new foods is an opportunity for the FSA to drive benefits for consumers by enabling new and innovative products that we assess as being safe to come to market more quickly,” Jebb said in May.

But whether these sweeping changes will actually take place now depends on Starmer’s cabinet, with talks set to be held between Labour ministers and the FSA to persuade the government to go ahead with the plan. “I think there is a good case for it but they may have other priorities,” Jebb told the Grocer.

A test of Labour’s promises

While the food safety body negotiates with the new government, a report that was due to be presented to the FSA’s board about the overhaul has now been postponed to September.

One major issue is the cost involved, according to Jebb. “Change often comes at a price initially, and whilst this may deliver us a better service in the long run, the cost of developing this at the same time as running the existing service should not be underestimated,” she said.

So far, three cultivated meat companies have publicly announced their submissions of dossiers for approval in the UK. Israel’s Aleph Farms was the first to do so last August for its cultivated beef (which has since been given the go-ahead in its home country), while France’s Vitalmeat applied for its cultivated chicken this May.

The only other dossier was for cultivated pet food. London-based Meatly has been in consultation with the FSA for 18 months for feed material registration, and with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for animal byproducts, legislation and facility treatment since August 2023. Its co-founders Owen Ensor and Helder Cruz revealed to Green Queen last month that the company will first launch cultivated chicken for dogs via a leading pet food brand in the UK, and expects approval by early August.

How the Labour government views the FSA’s move remains to be seen. But it’ll be a test of its pledges to work with businesses, support growth, and mitigate climate change. A report by think tank Green Alliance has suggested that, with the right combination of targeted investments and regulation, the UK’s alternative protein sector could be worth £6.8B annually and create 25,000 jobs by 2035.

Meanwhile, Defra has announced the Starmer government’s five key priorities for the climate, which involve cleaning up Britain’s water bodies, protecting communities from floods, ensuring nature’s recovery, creating a zero-waste economy, and supporting farmers to boost food security.

“Inevitably Labour’s approach to the issue of novel food is different to the previous government. That said, I do think the initiative very much fits into the Labour growth agenda, and I have heard from reliable sources that Keir Starmer is aware of the initiative,” a source told The Grocer.

But they warned that the FSA may have to look beyond state investment to support parts of its plan. “Obviously, getting the funds to make these changes is nonetheless a significant barrier in the current climate.”

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