The US state of Florida’s ban on meat cultivated in a lab from animal cells is facing a legal challenge.
The Institute for Justice (IJ) - a non-profit, public interest law firm - has partnered with cell-based meat firm Upside Foods to file a lawsuit to challenge the southern US state’s ban which they describe as “economic protectionism”.
The lawsuit was filed today (13 August) in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida. It argued that Florida’s ban violates the US Constitution’s provisions that prohibit protectionist measures designed to favour in-state businesses at the expense of out-of-state competitors.
“By targeting cultivated-meat, which is produced outside Florida, the law seeks to protect local meat producers from competition, undermining the principles of a national common market,” it said.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation which bans the sale of lab-grown meat in the state at the beginning of May.
He said the state was “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 added that his administration would continue supporting its “local farmers and ranchers” in a bid to “save our beef.”
The ban covers the manufacture, sale or distribution of cultivated meat in the state. It came into effect on 1 July.
Filing the lawsuit to challenge that ban, Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at the IJ, said: “If some Floridians don’t like the idea of eating cultivated-chicken, there’s a simple solution: Don’t eat it.
“The government has no right to tell consumers who want to try cultivated-meat that they’re not allowed to. This law is not about safety, it’s about stifling innovation and protecting entrenched interests at the expense of consumer choice.”
Uma Valeti, founder of California-based Upside Foods, added: “Anyone who wants to try cultivated-meat should have the opportunity to do so. Our mission is to offer a delicious, safe and ethical alternative to conventional meat, and we believe Floridians deserve the freedom to make their own food choices.
“Cultivated-meat represents a significant advancement in food technology with the potential to improve supply chain resilience and we are committed to making it available to all.”
Upside’s lab-grown chicken was given the green light by US regulator the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture in June 2023.
Florida was not the first state looking to prohibit the sale of lab-grown meat in the US. In January, Alabama state senators introduced a similar bill. Last year, the state of Texas also passed a law that would require cultivated-meat products to include front-of-pack messaging that indicates they are “cell-cultured” or “lab-grown”.
Just Food asked Governor DeSantis’s office for a response to the legal challenge but we were referred back to the comments the governor made when the ban was announced in May.
