The original version of this conversation originally aired on March 19, 2024.
The Florida legislature passed SB 1084 during the 2024 session. It makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or manufacture cultivated, or so-called ‘lab grown’ meat in the state.
Gov. DeSantis signed it into law in May, and now, the California-based company Upside Foods — which manufactures cultivated meat — has filed a lawsuit challenging the new law, arguing it gives an unconstitutional advantage to Florida farmers over out-of-state competitors.
Shortly after lawmakers approved SB 1084, we spoke with a meat science and safety expert to get a better understanding of the science behind cultivated meat and its implications for our current agriculture system and economy.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation last week that prohibits the manufacture for sale or distribution, or selling of, cultivated or so-called or “lab-grown” meat in Florida. Now that it’s law, SB 1084 makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or manufacture cultivated meat in the state.
The science behind cell-cultured meats has been around for quite some time, but not in the food science world, but in the world of medicine for creating replacement skin or even body parts. But, over the past decade or so companies have been working to perfect and scale up the ability to create beef, or chicken, or other animal meats in the lab.
And while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved lab-grown meat cultivation in June of last year, and gave approval to two companies — UPSIDE Foods and Good Meat — to make “cell-cultivated” food, it’s far from hitting the grocery store shelves or restaurant plates.
For example, plant-based meat products, like Impossible or Beyond Burgers, have become common in the U.S. marketplace, but they remain a very small percentage of the overall market and cell-cultured meats are way behind them.
To get some context on this new food science industry, and why a state legislature might already be banning it at this stage, we talk with Dr. Jennifer Martin, she’s an Associate Professor in Meat Science and Quality at Colorado State University, and an associate adjunct faculty member in the Colorado School of Public Health’s department of Epidemiology.
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