Science fiction down on the farm? What about this? Take some biopsies from live meat animals, put the cells, suspended in nutrients, in large bioreactors, and wait for them to grow into a larger mass that can be processed into products such as burgers and sausages. When asked for his opinion about this way of producing meat, a long-time beef raiser said, “What will they think of next?” Opponents of this new technology — and there are many — describe it as corporate ag gone amok and derisively dub it as “lab meat, “fake meat,” or “alt meat.” General terms are “cultivated meat” and “cultured meat.
” Not surprisingly, many meat producers warn that it’s a threat to traditional agriculture and to their livelihoods. It seems that agriculture poses such a large threat that in May, Florida passed a bill making it unlawful for any person in the state to manufacture, hold, or offer any cultivated meat for sale or distribution. Several other states have followed suit.
Not surprisingly, a lawsuit against the ban has already been launched. On the other side of the pond, Italy, in 2023, stepped into the fray and became the first country to ban cultivated meat, making it a law that lab-grown meat cannot be produced or marketed in Italy. Even though BBC, which has covered this topic, says that regulators in most countries say the top issue is food safety, Italy’s ban goes beyond that.
According to a statement from Italy’s ag minister, “the ban is trying to pr.