North Carolina Is the Latest State To Try To Restrict Lab-Grown Meat

Cultivated meat isn't challenging slaughtered meat anytime soon. But states keep trying to restrict competition.

A handful of states around the nation have moved to ban or restrict the sale of lab-grown meat. Now a new measure in North Carolina aims to place onerous labeling requirements on cultivated meat products.

House Bill 134 requires products containing lab-grown meat to "clearly disclose to a reasonable purchaser of meat food products that a food product is a cell-cultured meat product" by labeling it with terms like "cell-cultured," "fake," "lab-grown," or "grown in a lab." The bill also requires companies to place this disclaimer in 20-point font, or the size of the surrounding font, whichever is larger. The bill passed the state House in a 106–11 vote.

The proposal is far from the first attempt by state lawmakers to limit the sale of lab-grown meat. Iowa passed a similar labeling law last year. Florida and Alabama have banned the sale or production of cultivated meat entirely. Other states, including Tennessee, Arizona, and Texas, all considered similar bills banning lab-grown meat, though they ultimately did not pass. While North Carolina's labeling law passed the state House with overwhelming support, it wasn't without its detractors.

"Everybody loves a North Carolina farmer, let's say that first, but we cannot, and we must not try to stifle competition with this font, this labeling," state Rep. Deb Butler (D–New Hanover) argued. "It stigmatizes the product. And I just think that this kind of technology has the potential to really reduce greenhouse emissions moving forward."

That lab-grown meat is facing so much regulatory pushback is strange, considering that cultivated meat products aren't currently sold anywhere in the United States and were only available in a few restaurants for a brief period starting in 2023. While lab-grown meat isn't going to be challenging regular slaughtered meat anytime soon, the fact that so many lawmakers seem bent on curbing its potential shows just how afraid of competition many meat producers are.

"It's important to recognize that at present the cultivated meat industry has exciting long-term potential, but right now it's just potential. This is a tiny industry," Glenn Hurowitz, the founder and CEO of Mighty Earth, a climate-focused advocacy group, told Reason in November. "There's nothing that made me more excited about the potential for cultivated protein to get to scale than how afraid the meat industry seems to be of it…they seem to be taking it seriously."

Comments

[Chumby]

Some steakholders have a beef with lab grown meat.

[Rick James]

These legislators are sure acting chicken considering the poultry amount of market share that's at steak here.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

If “cultivated meats” are in such high demand, why wouldn’t you want to tell people about it?

[Chumby]

*crickets*

[SIV]

At least the bugs are "natural" meat.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

I think if people want to eat ze bugs they should be allowed to do so.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

“Our product is great! Please don’t make us tell people about it.”

[Eeyore]

Is it ok if we ban the lab meat that isn't free range lab meat? It's immoral to not allow my meat to get up and walk around outside.

[SQRLSY]

I allow my meat to get up and walk around outside, so ass to go and look for good-looking chicks! Meat, meet chicks!

[Rick James]

Jesus, you'd think they were banning internal combustion cars or something.

[mad.casual]

Emma, once again, finds the push back against lab-grown meat by people who are covered in defensive wounds, have to raise their pigs outside farrowing crates, and cover their products in Prop 65 warnings, to be strange.

[SIV]

Lab-grown meat, now with gain-of-function flavor!

[Eeyore]

Now with a self amplifying edible vaccine dose in every bite.

[SIV]

Animal rights? Animals don't have rights. Read Your Fucking Bible.

[Roberta]

There's a bible for that?

[mad.casual]

At this point, I'm pretty sure science has proven that souls can be no smaller than a large clitoris or micropenis, certainly not the size of single cells, or a clump of them. Anything smaller and they couldn't have a gender that's dimorphic but polydimensionally independent of biology.

Just don't ask me to explain how Dolly has a soul but a vat full of lamb cells doesn't, I'm no theologician.

[Kungpowderfinger]

Try growing a Moon Pie and an RC Cola in a vat, you one-world fucks.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

The breakfast of champions.

[Eeyore]

Now these sound like ok uses for vats.

[AT]

"clearly disclose to a reasonable purchaser of meat food products that a food product is a cell-cultured meat product" by labeling it with terms like "cell-cultured," "fake," "lab-grown," or "grown in a lab." The bill also requires companies to place this disclaimer in 20-point font, or the size of the surrounding font, whichever is larger.

Why is that onerous?

[mad.casual]

SSDD, your beer can't have the vague impression of a penis on it, all your other food has the nutrition facts requisitely plastered all over it, tobacco-free tobacco products have tobacco warnings, everything including things you don't eat is known to the state of CA to cause cancer, don't even try selling horse meat or raw milk... but lab-grown meat with a 20 pt. font is a bridge TOO FAR!

[AT]

Seems to me a reasonable compromise, at least for end-consumers, would be to just mandate it be sold in the specialty products section of the grocery store. Not next to the meat. Not even in the same section of the store as the meat.

They have an asian aisle. They have a mexi aisle. Some even have a kosher aisle. The freezers all have a dedicated space where they dump their black bean patties and tofu fries. Why not just stick the fake meat there.

[Fozzy Bear]

If you are going to sell me cancer cells bred in human fetal tissue, the least you can do is label it as such and not try to fraudulently describe those cancer nuggets as actual meat.