Texas Joins 6 Different States in Banning Lab-Grown Meat

Texas has formally turn out to be the seventh U.S. state to ban the sale of lab-grown meat.

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Invoice 261, which particularly prohibits the “manufacture, processing, possession, distribution, supply on the market, and sale of cell-cultured protein.” It defines cell-cultured protein as a meals product derived “from harvesting animal cells and artificially replicating these cells in a development medium to provide tissue.” The brand new legislation is ready to take impact on September 1, 2025.

As for why state legislators supported the ban, a Might Day by day Ground Report from the Texas Home of Representatives indicated that issues about cell-cultured protein posing a security danger to shoppers stemmed from the truth that “its creation course of entails direct interplay with microplastics that may trigger disruptions within the human cell membrane.”

The invoice was strongly supported by the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Affiliation. In a press release to a number of shops, the group stated the invoice will shield “Texas shoppers from being a science experiment as firms search to revenue from promoting cell-cultured protein with no long-term well being research.” It additionally said that the invoice opposes “an agenda by sure radical teams and firms who search to finish conventional animal agriculture.”

Texas’ Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller additionally praised the invoice, sharing in a assertion that “Texans have a God-given proper to know what’s on their plate, and for hundreds of thousands of Texans, it higher come from a pasture, not a lab. It is plain cowboy logic that we should safeguard our actual, genuine meat business from artificial options.”

It is essential to notice that cell-cultivated meat is not artificial. As Meals & Wine beforehand reported, the Congressional Analysis Service defines cell-cultivated meat as “developed in a lab, grown from a pattern of animal cells that doesn’t require the slaughter of animals.” By definition, it’s meat, however no animals are born or killed within the course of.

Meals & Wine additional defined that creating cell-cultivated meat entails 5 levels: taking a biopsy of animal cells, banking the cells, rising them, harvesting, and processing. All of those steps are intently overseen by each the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) and america Division of Agriculture (USDA).

These caught violating the brand new Texas legislation will face a brand new Class A misdemeanor cost. Repeat violations may end result within the cost being upgraded to a felony. In accordance with Harris County’s official web site, Class A misdemeanors are “punishable by as much as one yr in jail, a positive of as much as $4,000, or each jail time and a positive.” 

Different states which have banned cell-cultivated meat embrace Nebraska, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Alabama, and Florida.

Nonetheless, as FoodBev Media reported, Upside Meals, which obtained regulatory approval from the FDA and USDA in 2023, is suing the state of Florida over its ban. In April, a U.S. District Courtroom choose for the Northern District of Florida denied a movement to dismiss the lawsuit, paving the best way for a courtroom showdown. In response, Uma Valeti, the CEO of Upside Meals, said, “All we’re asking for is the precise to compete, in order that Floridians can strive our product and see that it’s potential to have scrumptious meat with out the necessity for slaughtering animals.”