Florida's governor says he will "save our beef, but a lab-grown meat firm calls it an assault on liberty.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has banned lab-grown meat, saying he will “save our beef” from the “global elite” and its “authoritarian plans”.

“Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs,” Mr DeSantis said in a statement.

The first-in-the-nation law prohibits anyone from selling or distributing lab-grown meat in Florida.

Similar efforts are under way in Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee.

Lab-grown or “cultivated” meat was first cleared for consumption in the US in 2022.

The process of making cultivated meat involves extracting cells from an animal, which are then fed with nutrients such as proteins, sugars and fats. The end product is genetically indistinguishable from traditionally produced meat.

Studies have suggested that eating cultivated meat can cut carbon emissions and water usage, and free up land for nature, compared to eating traditionally produced meat.

  • AutistoMephisto
    1•7 months ago

    One thing people are afraid of though is being “duped”. In a world where everyone is afraid of deception, they want all the products they consume to be clearly labeled. My partner thinks that they’ve been steadily replacing all meat with lab-grown and just not telling anyone and not labeling the packaging. Like, one day she stopped buying the chicken breasts she’d normally get, saying that “it doesn’t taste right. It doesn’t taste how it did pre-pandemic. They’ve done something to it.”