9 Mins Read

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill to ban the sale and production of cultivated meat in the state, in a news conference that poked fun at the World Economic Forum. The alternative protein industry says it’s “reckless” and sends a “terrible message”.

All it took was 24 hours. Ron DeSantis couldn’t wait to sign the much-debated SB 1084, a bill that was headlined by a ban on cultivated meat in Florida.

“Some people think Florida is theme parks, South Beach and maybe some oranges, but they don’t understand that we have one of the top cattle industries in the country,” the governor said in a press conference surrounded by cattle ranchers in Hardee County. “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 was stood behind a banner that read ‘Save Our Beef’ in the style of the World Economic Forum’s logo. The organisation has previously outlined the importance of alternative proteins to meet the needs of a population that will reach 10 billion in 2050 and combat the changing climate. “I’m sure they’ll say: ‘Hey, wait a minute, just hear us out before you say yuck,’” said DeSantis. “I say Florida has heard enough on that.”

Taking aim at the “liberal elite”, he added: “Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”

The bill makes it a second-degree misdemeanour to manufacture, transport, commercialise or sell cultivated meat. Businesses can have their licences revoked and receive an immediate stop-sale order. All in a state where meat production continues to rise, with half of its land set aside for cattle farming.

“This legislation has always been about one thing – helping one industry, Big Ag, avoid accountability and competition. Today, these multinational corporations and their lobbyists won,” said Tom Rossmeissl, head of global marketing at Eat JUST, one of two companies that have sold cultivated meat (under its GOOD Meat brand) in the US after clearing extensive food safety assessments by the USDA and FDA.

Pointing to these regulatory approvals, Pepin Tuma, legislative director at alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI), said: “Why are politicians with no experience in food safety interfering where they don’t belong?” In doing so, he argued that these lawmakers are “foreclosing innovative investments that would actually create opportunities for Florida farmers”.

It’s a “reckless” move that “ignores food safety experts and science, stifles consumer choice, and hinders American innovation”, according to Sean Edgett, chief legal officer at UPSIDE Foods, the other company approved to sell cultivated meat in the US.

Why Florida decided to ban cultivated meat

SB 1084 was introduced by Republican state representative Jay Collins in the Senate at the end of last year. “There are many concerns right here and, until we have those studies and there’s proof positive that this process is going to work, we want to ban this in the state of Florida because it’s just not there quite yet,” said Collins.

The bill has gradually moved through both chambers of the Florida government, with the Senate voting 29-10 in favour in late February, followed by an 86-27 vote in the house a week later. It reached DeSantis on Tuesday, who could either sign or veto the bill within 15 days, though he was widely expected to do the former.

“Today, Florida is fighting back 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,” he said, painting a misrepresentation picture of how cultivated meat is produced. At a scale large enough to sell to consumers, these proteins are grown in bioreactors, not petri dishes. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef,” added DeSantis.

Florida’s agricultural commissioner, Wilton Simpson, called cultivated meat a “disgraceful attempt” that undermined “authentic agriculture”. “Who wants to have a biomass shipped to their house, put into a tank, grown in a lab, and then put it through a 3D printer to make it look like a steak you want to eat?” he said at the conference, seemingly bundling three different processes of making alternative proteins into one.

As GFI’s Pepin underlined, politicians have a lack of expertise on these subjects. But they’re playing food police instead of choosing innovation, economic growth and consumer choice. This is echoed by Edgett. “This is a protectionist policy for entrenched interests, violates free market principles, and limits consumer choice,” he said, adding that Florida was “choosing winners and losers when they should let consumers make their own decisions about what to eat”.

Pepin agreed that Floridians should not be limited by government overreach: “The Sunshine State’s eccentric decision casts a long shadow on its laudable ambition to keep the state open for business.”

Cultivated meat ban closes off investors and jobs

Like the larger food tech and venture capital space, cultivated meat has already been suffering from a dip in investments globally. According to GFI, funding in this category dropped by 75% in 2023. And so far, the first quarter of this year has seen merely 5% of the $226M invested in the sector in the previous 12 months. It’s why VC firm AgFunder has earmarked cultivated meat as a “category to watch” this year.

Florida’s ban has raised concerns over how investors will see this industry. “This bill sends a terrible message to the investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs that have built America’s global leadership in alternative proteins,” said Eat JUST’s Rossmeissl, noting that the law is a setback to consumer choice, as well as “Florida’s technology sector, innovators and entrepreneurs, and all those working to stop the worst impacts of climate change”.

Meat production alone accounts for 60% of the food system’s total emissions globally, which itself make up a third of all human-caused emissions. Peer-reviewed studies have shown that cultivated meat is drastically better for the environment, with a life-cycle assessment (LCA) from 2023 revealing that cultivated meat is three times more adept at turning crops into meat than even the “most efficient” livestock. A similar LCA by GFI in 2021 suggested that cultivated meat produced via renewable energy can have a 92% lower impact on global heating, needs 95% less land, and uses 78% less water compared to conventionally farmed beef.

“A ban like this threatens a free market and sets a dangerous precedent for government interference,” Emily Bogan, head of business opportunities at cultivated meat company Fork & Good, told a House panel in February. “We want to ensure that affordable meat is available for generations to come.”

For all of DeSantis’s rhetoric about protecting American farmers and saving American jobs, industry members say this will have the opposite effect. Rossmeissl believes China will be celebrating, “as they are closer to overcoming our nation’s lead in this emerging sector”. This chimes with the comments of Justin Kolbeck, co-founder of cultivated seafood company Wildtype, who told the House panel that the ban “will deepen our country’s dependence on imports from countries like China” and “create Chinese jobs at the expense of small businesses like mine”.

And far from taking jobs, analysis from the ClimateWorks Foundation and the Global Methane Hub has found that the continued openings of cultivated meat facilities around the world could support up to 83 million jobs by 2050.

“Some of America’s largest meat companies have been early investors in cultivated meat,” said UPSIDE Foods’ Edgett. “They recognise cultivated meat’s potential to complement conventional meat production, improve supply chain resilience, and ensure American’s access to meat as global demand for animal protein is projected to double by 2050. Florida’s ban is an affront to progress and job creation. Florida should embrace scientific and technological innovation.”

Despite fears of a domino effect, startups remain positive

Before passing the ban, Florida’s lawmakers did make one amendment. They removed a stipulation that would have prohibited research on cultivated meat from being carried out in the state, out of concerns that this could affect the space industry, which is looking at cultivated meat for long-term journeys.

However, it’s the first state to officially prohibit the sale of cultivated meat in the US, and after Italy, only the second government globally to do so. It’s far from the only American state to have attempted this in the first place, though: Alabama, Arizona, Wisconsin, Texas, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida have all proposed various types of bans on cultivated meat. In fact, just last week, the Alabama House passed a bill similar to Florida’s, and its counterpart in Arizona did so for a restriction on product labelling (no cultivated meat has made it to retail so far, anywhere in the world).

Florida itself has had two other attempts. Tyler Sirois’s HB 435 died before it reached the Senate, but Danny Alvarez’s HB 1071 is being contemplated in the House. The fear is that the passing of SB 1084 could create a ripple effect across America, where other states could use it almost as a precedent to introduce their own bans. DeSantis himself said so at the press conference, noting: “There have been other countries… that have said no, I think there’s going to be more states that are increasingly going to say no.”

But you only need to look at the response from the North American Meat Institute, the country’s oldest and largest trade association (representing 95% of the US’s meat output), to gauge that this is not a good idea. In a letter sent to DeSantis in March, the group 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.

“Cultivated meat has been deemed safe to eat by experts from the USDA and FDA, so this is not a move to protect Florida’s consumers,” said Edgett. “We’re ready to build a better food future together.”

Like UPSIDE Foods, other cultivated meat companies remain positive. Rossmeissl said that while Eat JUST was disappointed about the ban, it would not stop the development of cultivated meat. This was echoed by Wildtype’s marketing VP, Jenny Berien, and fellow cultivated seafood company BlueNalu’s associate director of corporate communications, Mia Montanile.

They are co-chairs of US cellular agriculture alliance the Association of Meat, Poultry and Seafood (AMPS) Innovation. In a joint statement, they noted that despite the ban, there “continues to be widespread recognition” of cultivated meat’s benefits, including protein supply consistency and enhanced food security. “Recognising the need to diversify our protein sources in the face of growing demand and finite resources, many nations around the world and leaders in the incumbent agricultural industry are supporters and even investors in the cultivated meat and seafood industry,” they noted.

“Bringing new, innovative sources of protein production to the table is critical to bridge the gap between global supply and demand,” they continued. “With its deep roots in agricultural innovation, the United States is well-positioned to lead this next chapter in sustainable protein production – a chapter powered by a diverse community that includes regenerative farmers, ranchers and fishers, as well as innovators in animal cell cultivation. To feed a growing world using fewer resources, we’ll need more agricultural innovation, not less.”

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8 Mins Read

Australia’s Vow Food has received regulatory approval for its cultivated quail in Singapore, becoming the fourth company to do so globally. It will unveil the product as part of a parfait under its Forged brand at the Mandala Club, followed by other restaurants in the city-state.

A regulatory greenlight, a restaurant debut, a consumer brand launch, and an entirely new concept animal – it’s a big day for Vow Food.

The Sydney-based startup is just the second company to be approved to sell cultivated meat in Singapore, which will allow it to launch its cell-cultured Japanese quail product – called Forged Parfait – onto diners’ plates, starting today at the Mandala Club, which will host a series of exclusive dinners using the parfait at its Japanese eatery Mori.

As part of Forged, its new premium consumer brand, Vow Food also invented Quailia, a new concept animal inspired by quail that serves the sole purpose of being “utterly delicious”. The idea is to present consumers with something they’ve never tasted before. “Quailia is a metaphor for what we are doing: creating new experiences rather than replicating food animals make,” co-founder and CEO George Peppou tells Green Queen.

“We believe that the future of cultured meat is not in replicating what already exists, but in creating deliberately different foods designed for meat-eaters,” he says. “This is the first product of its kind to be approved anywhere in the world: not an imitation of chicken or beef, but a truly unique cultured meat designed to elevate our experience of food.”

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA), which assessed Vow Food’s application for over a year, was famously the first regulator ever to approve cultivated meat when it gave the go-ahead to Eat Just’s chicken in 2020. Since then, Eat Just and fellow Californian startup Upside Foods (also making chicken) have received the greenlight in the US, and Aleph Farms has done so in its home country of Israel for cultivated beef.

Only Eat Just (under its Good Meat brand) and Upside Foods have served cultivated meat products to diners so far, making Vow Food the third to do so with its restaurant launch. Alongside the Mandala Club, the Forged Parfait will land on the menus of several other eateries in Singapore over the next two months.

A metaphorical bird meant to be eaten

Founded in 2019 by Peppou and chief commercial officer Tim Noakesmith, Vow Food has raised $56M over three funding rounds, including a $49.8M Series A in 2022. It made headlines – a lot of them – last year after unveiling a wooly mammoth meatball from sheep cells. It garnered everyone’s attention, with some questions raised over the intentions of the project.

“We needed to do something so outrageous that it would break through into mainstream media,” Peppou told Green Queen in the days after the announcement. While the meatball wasn’t something Vow Food was intended for commercialisation, its cultivated quail very much is.

The startup has always talked about its intention to “invent entirely new meats” that “meat-lovers can and would choose selfishly”, and has been known to work with zebra, alpaca, water buffalo, kangaroo and crocodile cells. The development of Quailia is an extension of this vision, with the company referring to it as a “carefully crafted subspecies of the Japanese quail”.

It takes inspiration from the bird’s scientific name, Coturnix japonica, adopting the moniker Coturnix Fornax instead. Vow Food describes Qualia as a blend of flavours and textures that unlocks an “unparalleled gastronomic experience” and, crucially, a bird that has no heart, bread, feather or bones. “Quailia is the ultimate expression of what we do – create foods that are intentionally unlike anything we’ve had before,” says Peppou.

The company conducted a 1,000-person survey of Singaporeans who frequent high-end restaurants, and found that more than half want to experience never-before-tasted ingredients. It’s why it decided to debut the product as part of a parfait, which is made up of 60% of its cultivated quail, butter, shallots, tapioca starch, port wine, brandy, garlic, vegetable and fruit concentrates, olive oil, salt and thyme.

The Quailia itself, meanwhile, is 100% cultivated quail cells, eschewing the hybrid approach being adopted by the likes of Eat Just, Aleph Farms, Dutch producer Meatable, and others. “We believe in creating entirely new food experiences,” Peppou says. “Quail is a great way to introduce consumers to this. It’s familiar enough to be interesting, but not something eaten regularly enough for consumers to have a strong view of what it is and isn’t.”

Vow Foods prides itself on speed and cost efficacy

In October 2022, Vow Food opened one of the largest cultivated meat facilities in the world. Dubbed Factory 1, it is said to be capable of producing 30 tonnes of product per year. It simultaneously announced that it had begun developing a sister site, Factory 2, which would have the capability of manufacturing 100 times more cultivated meat. Peppou kept his cards close to the chest about the second facility, but hinted that “it’s going very well”.

It will help Vow Food push past a huge industry bottleneck. Scalability is one of cultivated meat’s biggest challenges, and has impeded the continued progress of such products’ market availability. “So far, the global cultured meat industry has suffered from a lack of scalability,” says Peppou, “and products that promise improved sustainability or reduced environmental impact but offer nothing new in terms of taste, texture or appeal when compared to the existing meat offerings.”

He adds: “At Vow, we’ve cracked both those challenges by creating an irresistible product that consumers will want because it’s unlike anything else on offer, and that we are already producing at commercial scale.”

Vow Food COO Ellen Dinsmoor confirms that at present, the company is producing over 100kg of product per month and “will continue to ramp up production as Forged launches in more venues in Singapore and more jurisdictions around the world”.

She adds: “We’re doing it for a fraction of the capital of the largest cultured meat companies in the world.” For context, Eat Just has raised over $850M, Upside Foods has brought in $608M, and Aleph Farms $115M. The five-year-old business also notes that it has commercialised in half the time of some of these companies.

Speaking to Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras on the Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers in October, Peppou had explained that Vow Food’s first product would be foodservice-only. “How do you make sure people’s first contacts and first experiences are as positive as possible, especially when there is a product that has some assumed knowledge around how you cook it? How do you have a great experience?” he noted, outlining his thinking.

He now confirms these plans, saying that the company is “entirely focused on foodservice” for Forged, with “no imminent plans” for a retail launch.

You can taste Forged Parfait as part of a seven-course meal

“We knew we wanted to launch our products into the Singaporean market first, not only because of the globally renowned culinary scene, but also because of the clear regulatory pathways and the ease of doing business,” notes Dismoor.

The SFA’s assessment process is described by Vow Foods’ head of regulatory affairs Andrew Janis as “amongst the most rigorous in the world”, and one that sets a “clear benchmark for other jurisdictions in Asia”. “Singapore was an obvious choice for Vow given that the SFA has significant experience assessing cultured meat and is regarded as a global leader when it comes to regulatory rigour,” he says.

“We have been deeply impressed by the SFA’s commitment to food safety and are confident that their approval will set us up well as we look to enter additional markets,” Janis added. Speaking of which, Vow Food is currently in the middle of the public consultation stage of the regulatory process in Australia and New Zealand, with the next round due to open towards the middle of the year. The company has indicated that it is engaged in conversations with regulators on four continents.

For the Forged Parfait, it collaborated with Ryan Clift, chef-owner of contemporary eatery Tippling Club, who has been working with the brand for two years. “I’m so blown away by the profile of this product. It’s sweet, has a beautiful, delicate flavour, and the texture is always perfect. It’s the perfect parfait.”

The product’s Mandala Club debut will run from April 12-27, where intimate seatings of only 14 guests will experience a S$289 ($214) seven-course Omakase menu featuring the cultivated quail. Curated by Mori head chef Chun Hong La and Forged chef Adem Kurcan, the menu features savoury cannoli filled with Forged Parfait and served with Black Pearl caviar; a Hokkaido Wagyu Sando (a milk bun topped with A5 Hokkaido Wagyu and Forged Parfait), and Forged Brûlée (layered with port jelly and cognac-poached morels).

“It’s really about finding those true fans, finding the people that are really engaged, and I’ve been on that journey with us, bringing them together, and learning as much as we possibly can about what they love about it, and how they talk about it,” Peppou said on Green Queen’s podcast last year. “The first few months for us are going to be about learning from consumers and learning from customers before we go and try to scale out to heaps of different restaurants and food service. So, there’ll be lots of small, intimate pop-ups all over the city, which will give you a chance to taste.”

He added: “We have a chance to really shape and change our food system. We have a chance to take an experiment with meat in a way that no one else has been able to, and that’s always been the thing which excites and inspires me, and do so in a way which creates positive benefits. I think Vow will be successful, if we either directly, or through inspiring the direction of others, are able to shift at least a single-digit percentage of meat consumption away from animals to something else.”

Vow Food may not be the only cultivated meat company to receive SFA approval this year, with Meatable and France’s Vital Meat both poised to get the greenlight soon.

The post Vow Food Earns Singapore Regulatory Approval for Cultivated Quail, Debuts Parfait at Mandala Club appeared first on Green Queen.

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6 Mins Read

Dutch cultivated meat leader Meatable has cut the production time for its cultivated meat by half, making it the fastest process in the sector. This means its hybrid pork sausages are much cheaper to produce, months before their expected launch in Singapore.

Ahead of its market launch in Singapore later this year, Meatable has achieved a significant breakthrough in its manufacturing capabilities, allowing its patented Opti-ox tech to produce its cultivated pork sausages in just four days, with half as many bioreactors and significantly lower costs.

This means the Dutch startup can make cultivated meat faster than anyone else in the industry, and represents an important step towards the large-scale production and commercialisation of its hybrid pork. Scalability and costs have been the two major barriers to cultivated meat for years, and Meatable says its production milestone – which sees the timeline of the transformation from cell to sausage cut in half – can overcome these challenges.

“The Meatable process centres around the use of pluripotent stem cells [PSCs] with our patented, proprietary opti-ox technology, which enables those cells to differentiate into mature muscle and fat cells – the ingredients for real meat in a fast and cost-efficient process,” Meatable co-founder and chief technology officer Daan Luining told Green Queen. “By reducing cell differentiation time in half, our process now requires nearly half as many bioreactors at scale, cutting both CAPEX and OPEX costs and enabling a more efficient use of production space.

How Meatable makes cultivated meat so quickly

In a chat with Green Queen in August – after a Series B funding round that took its total raised to $95M – Meatable co-founder and CEO Krijn de Nood explained that its Opti-ox technology allows the team to make its products by isolating a single animal cell, without the need for fetal bovine serum.

“While immortalised cell lines are more commonly found in the industry, they require an alteration of the cells to allow them to multiply indefinitely,” he said. The PSCs Luining mentioned above “have the natural ability to keep on multiplying and to do so rapidly”, and at the time, could double in just 24 hours. “The difficulty with using PSCs is that it can be more challenging to change them from stem cells into more specialised cells, such as muscle or fat,” said de Nood.

But by combining these cells with its technology, Meatable was able to produce real muscle and fat cells that are fully differentiated in just eight days. “This is coupled with a perfusion process that allows the team to work in a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities,” he added. “This means we can grow a lot of cells in our bioreactors, and harvest cultured meat from the reactors continuously. This is a great step forward as it increases productivity and makes the process easy to scale.”

Now, that timeline has been halved, allowing Meatable to produce cultivated pork 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork, and significantly quicker than other cultivated meat processes. “We have been able to create high-quality, fully differentiated cultivated meat with the right level of protein, fat accumulation, and key meat flavours in only four days, a significant reduction in a process that typically takes weeks,” noted Luining. “We are constantly working to improve the efficiency of our process, while also increasing the amount and quality of the fat and muscle tissue in our product.”

Crucially, this drives down production costs too, which represent a key bottleneck for cultivated meat companies. According to Leticia Goncalves, global foods president at ADM (an investor in companies like Good Meat and Believer Meats), cultivated meat needs to reach production costs of $2.92 per lb to be cost-competitive with conventional meat. And while producers have managed to reduce costs by 99% in less than a decade, McKinsey forecasts that it will still take until 2030 for it to reach price parity.

“With this breakthrough, we are able to drive down the costs and work towards producing meat at a competitive price point faster than others in our category,” said Luining. “The breakthrough results in less labour, energy, infrastructure, ingredients, and water used in our process, making us more scalable, cost-efficient, and also more sustainable for the planet.”

Asked how its first products will be priced, he added: “At launch, we are confident our price point will match those for high-end organic meats, and then we plan to ultimately match mass-market pricing. We are optimistic that Meatable will reach price parity with traditional farmed meat in the next few years.”

Meatable looking to capitalise on regulatory progress

Speaking of market launch, Meatable expects to roll out its cultivated pork sausages in mid-2024 in Singapore, where it filed a dossier for regulatory approval last year. It has conducted several rounds of public tastings. These showcased multiple prototypes of its hybrid meat, which is a blend of cultivated pig cells and plant-based ingredients.

Hybrid meat has been touted by investors as the way cultivated meat will enter the market on a broad scale. Speaking to Green Queen last year, Heather Courtney, general partner at Alwyn Capital, said: “It’s likely the only way to make cultivated commercially feasible… as the chances of being able to economically produce 100% cultivated products that can compete on price with commoditised meat are slim to none in the next 10+ years.”

This is echoed by Luining, who confirmed that Meatable’s eventual hybrid sausages will comprise at least 33% of cultivated meat. “This delivers a truly superior flavour and taste experience over plant-based alternatives to satisfy the quality that meat-eating consumers recognize and expect,” he explained. “While our process can result in fully cultivated meat, the speed and scale of production would be limited, and the hybrid approach results in a game-changing product.’

While it eventually wants to get into retail, Meatable’s initial entry into the market will be through restaurant menus in Singapore – as has been the case with all other cultivated meat companies to have launched their products, such as Good Meat in Singapore and the US, and Upside Foods in the latter. And given the regulatory success of these companies in the US, Meatable is eyeing an expansion there in 2025, and is already in talks with the USDA and FDA over the regulatory process.

As for its home continent, things are a little tricky. The EU has the world’s most robust food safety regulations around novel foods, and so far, no company has filed for approval in the bloc. In fact, some countries have been trying to create further barriers towards regulatory clearance for cultivated meat, with Italy having banned its sale and production, and France and Romania looking to do the same.

The Netherlands, for its part, has been much more progressive in its support for these proteins, facilitating a €60M grant for cellular agriculture in 2022, and expressed its support in the EU meeting about cultivated meat, with food quality and agriculture minister Piet Adema saying: “We believe that it is important to support innovations that create production methods for animal proteins complementary to, and not as a substitute to, conventional sustainable production.”

Putting its money where its mouth is, the Dutch government in January became the first EU nation to develop a framework to allow public tasting events of cultivated meat. Meatable has already filed a dossier and is awaiting the green light to sample its pork sausages to consumers in the country.

“Our ultimate goal is to get our products on the plates of consumers all over the world through our future restaurant and retail partners,” said Luining. “Recent regulatory developments have boosted confidence in the industry… We look forward to capitalising on this momentum.”

The post Ahead of Singapore Launch, Meatable Can Now Make Cultivated Meat Quicker Than Anyone Else appeared first on Green Queen.

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7 Mins Read

Florida will imminently ban cultivated meat from being produced or sold within state borders, with governor Ron DeSantis set to sign the bill that was passed in the Republican-controlled House last week. But the alternative protein industry is fighting back.

“We’re not going to do that fake meat. Like, that doesn’t work.”

These are the words of a lawmaker whose presidential campaign to undo all climate progress didn’t work (although the man who beat him out is worse). However, Ron DeSantis is still the governor of Florida, and despite support for the Republican seesawing over the last couple of months, his words are likely to come true soon.

Last week, a Senate bill that attempted to ban cultivated meat in Florida was passed by the House of Representatives, meaning all it now needs a sign-off from DeSantis’s red pen. And given his rhetoric about what he calls “fake meat” (which it isn’t) and overarching views about the climate crisis – he believes humans, four million of whom could die due to climate change in 2024, are safer than ever – his approval of the ban is an almost certainty.

This would mean, despite scientists, the USDA, and the FDA ruling that cultivated meat is safe for human consumption, Florida’s Big Ag lobby and livestock-loving policymakers have decided otherwise. The alternative protein industry, however, isn’t having it – and it’s pushing back with a new campaign.

Why Florida wants to ban cultivated meat

It all started in November last year, when Florida House representative Tyler Sirois proposed a bill (HB 435) seeking to ban the manufacturing and sale of cultivated meat within the state, imposing criminal penalties on anyone violating these rules. There was a list of penalties for non-compliance, with violators facing a misdemeanour of the second degree, alongside a fine between $500 to $1,000, and a possible license suspension or immediate stop-sale order.

While that didn’t really go anywhere, two others have. HB 1071, sponsored by Republican House representative Danny Alvarez, has been passed by the House and will now go to the Senate. And SB 1084, introduced by Republican state representative Jay Collins in the Senate, has been passed in both chambers. It prohibits people from producing, selling, holding or distributing cultivated meat, with similar penalties of second-disagree misdemeanours, licence suspensions, and stop-sale orders.

“There are many concerns right here and, until we have those studies and there’s proof positive that this process is going to work, we want to ban this in the state of Florida because it’s just not there quite yet, Collins has said, despite the USDA and FDA carrying out multi-year reviews to prove the exact opposite.

The real reason, really, is an intention to protect the state’s livestock industry from competition from novel protein companies, perpetuate what has become a common right-wing neophobia of food tech, and mobilise voter sentiment against the “woke elite” in the climate change and alt-protein culture wars. It’s a crucial aspect considering that Republicans are looking to reclaim the White House by the end of the year.

UPSIDE Foods Launches Give a Cluck Campaign

As we await DeSantis’ inevitable sign-off, alternative protein companies are fighting back with awareness campaigns and op-eds. California’s UPSIDE Foods, which is one of the two manufacturers in the US to have been approved to sell cultivated meat, is asking what the fuck – sorry, cluck – is going on.

The company argues that the bill “bans your right to choose your meat”. But instead of just restricting consumer choice, it also threatens innovation, the free market and the nation’s biotech leadership.

“We understand cultivated meat may not be for everyone, but it’s clucking frustrating to see a state close their doors before they’ve even had a chance to taste it [only restaurants in California and Washington DC have served cultivated meat so far] – or really even learn about how it’s made and the potential benefits,” the company says. “It’s like killing your chickens before they hatch.”

UPSIDE Foods says supporters of these bans are victims of online misinformation and have concerns over safety, competition with conventional meat, ethics, and economics. But it points out how the US food safety regulators have approved these products, adding that cultivated meat is “complementary, not competitive” and will co-exist with other meat production methods.

The startup further notes that everyone should have the freedom to choose what they eat, and cultivated meat can potentially make people in an ethical dilemma feel good about meat-eating. Finally, it suggests that this ban – and other similar proposals across the US – will give other countries a competitive edge in producing a more “resilient and self-sufficient food system”.

Therefore, UPSIDE Foods’ self-produced campaign is asking consumers to call or email DeSantis to veto SB 1084 and HB 1071. “Americans stand for freedom… not bans on freedom or free markets or choice,” said founder and CEO Uma Valeti.

The meat industry is also against Florida’s ban on cultivated meat

But it’s not just UPSIDE Foods that is pushing back – others have joined the fight too. Leaders from 38 VC funds have signed a letter against the ban, noting that becoming the only state to ban cultivated meat would stop it from attracting investment in research.

“Passage of this legislation will have economic ramifications for Florida. Biotechnology and biomanufacturing are among the fastest-growing industries in the United States, with biomanufacturing leveraging biological systems to produce goods at a commercial scale, offering innovative solutions across various sectors including plastics, fuels, foods, and pharmaceuticals,” the letter reads. “In the short life of this emerging industry, investors have already put almost $3B in capital to work on this product, supporting thousands of jobs in this promising industry.”

It continues: “Florida would uniquely choose to restrict a vital segment of the American biotechnology sector. Such a decision will raise strong doubts among investors about the state’s commitment to supporting emerging technologies, hindering future investments to the industry and Florida.”

Meanwhile, industry leaders have voiced their concerns too. Writing for The Hill, Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co (which produces mycelium protein for blended meat), called the ban a “dumb mistake”. “DeSantis and other like-minded policymakers seeking to deny Americans the freedom to choose the meat they can eat may see a threat from innovative entrepreneurs working to bring cultivated meat to market,” he explained. “But those committed to a free market should ask if it’s really the state’s role to stamp out entrepreneurial competition to ensure incumbent industries always win.”

He added that, despite progress, we’re “still a long way from seeing cultivated meat show up [on] grocery shelves, due to the industry’s lack of scale”. This was echoed by Didier Toubia, CEO of Aleph Farms (only the third company to have received regulatory approval for cultivated meat globally), who wrote in an op-ed for Fast Company about how what he sees as “continuous progress and learning”, critics view as “unwarranted delays or even downright failure”.

Toubia outlined that his one regret was not tempering consumer expectations about the mainstreaming of cultivated meat, which is “not a quick fix”. “Sceptics are right to point out that cellular agriculture cannot afford to remain stagnant; it must keep evolving in order to have its intended impact,” he wrote, adding: “By better qualifying our success and managing expectations, we can help people see cultivated meat as we see it: a marathon rather than a sprint.”

But perhaps the most striking opposition to Florida’s ban comes from the very industry its lawmakers are trying to ‘protect’. The North American Meat Institute, the country’s oldest and largest trade association (representing 95% of the US’s meat output), has called the ban “bad public policy” in a letter to DeSantis.

“Legislators and others who beat the ‘food safety’ drum in support of HB 1071 and SB 1084 do so at their peril, and the peril of others, because these bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” the letter states, suggesting that it could set a precedent for climate or health policies in other states that could ban conventional meat.

“Restricting the sale and manufacture of cell-cultivated meat products limits consumer choice and denies Floridians access to food options,” it adds. “Decisions about what to consume or purchase should be left to the market and consumers, not dictated by legislation that hampers progress and competition.”

What does it say about a state’s policy when the very group lawmakers are purportedly ‘protecting’ calls out its bullshit? I’ll let DeSantis be the judge of that.

The post Florida Will Soon Ban Cultivated Meat – Here’s How the Industry is Fighting Back appeared first on Green Queen.

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