Cultured meat is the culture wars’ newest bone of contention.
Republican efforts to ban and even outlaw production of the food, more commonly known as lab-grown meat, are heating up in states across the country.
In Florida, Tennessee and at least five other states, lawmakers have tabled legislation to prevent the development and sale of the products, which are created in labs using cells taken from animals.
Advocates of the nascent industry – which has received billions of dollars in investment from entrepreneurs including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos – say cultured meat is an ethical, environmentally sound alternative to conventional farming.
But opponents, many of them on the right, have raised health concerns, talked up threats to the agriculture industry and even described the process as an ‘affront to nature and creation’.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the Republican former presidential hopeful, recently joined the growing herd of conservatives to publicly oppose lab-grown meat.
‘You need meat, OK. And we’re going to have meat in Florida,’ he said in February. ‘We’re not going to have fake meat. Like that doesn’t work.’
DeSantis is expected to give approval to a bill passed by the state legislature which would make it ‘unlawful for any person to manufacture, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in this state’.
