Mississippi lawmakers have real fears about “fake meat,” and the state could become the latest to ban food made from plants, insects, or grown in a lab from being described as meat. The state House on [February 28] voted 117-0 for Senate Bill 2922 , sending it to Gov. Phil Bryant for his signature or veto.
Cattle growers want rules, saying new products are fine, but producers shouldn’t be allowed to masquerade as meat. “It doesn’t limit anybody from going into this type of business,” state Rep. Vince Mangold, a Brookhaven Republican, told the House on [February 28].
Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson [is] calling for similar rules nationwide. He calls it a truth-in-labeling issue.
“As we have seen with many foods in the past, label names allowed to be on new foods can be detrimental to the foods they attempt to imitate, emulate, follow or profit from,” the Republican Gipson wrote in comments Nov. 30.
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Missouri became the first state to begin regulating the issue [in 2018] and a number of states are considering similar bills….Some plant-based food producers sued Missouri, claiming its measure is unconstitutional.
“The statute is a content-based, overbroad, and vague criminal law that….impedes competition by plant-based and clean-meat companies in the marketplace,” wrote lawyers for Turtle Island Foods and the Good Food Institute….
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