Gov. DeSantis Bans Lab-Grown Meat Sales, Manufacturing in Florida
The beef industry is striking back against the “War on Meat” as well, with its own analysis of “sustainability” that is much more rational than what is being offered by environmental extremists.
We have covered the attempts to make “lab-grown” meat popular among consumers, including the rebranding as “cultured meat“.
As woke eco-activists attempt to make this protein option more appealing through a sustainability campaign, many people have a beef with this approach.
Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, has taken matters one step further and banned the sale or manufacture of lab gown meat in the state.
DeSantis said the bill (SB 1084), which includes a series of changes related to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, will protect the state’s cattle industry against “an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem.”
“One of the things that these folks want to eliminate is meat production in the United States,” DeSantis said while behind a lectern stating “Save Our Beef” at the Hardee County Cattlemen’s Arena in Wauchula.
In fact, DeSantis specifically cited the “climate crisis” agenda that is being used to undermine the beef and dairy industries as part of his announcement of the bill.
“They will say that you can’t drive an internal combustion engine vehicle. They’ll say that agriculture is bad. Meanwhile, they’re flying to Davos in their private jets,” DeSantis said.
He also poked fun at The World Economic Forum, an international non-governmental organization in Switzerland, that has advocated for insects as an alternative edible protein source instead of animal protein.
“I’m sure they’ll say ‘hey, wait a minute, just hear us out before you say yuck,'” joked DeSantis. “To that I say Florida has heard enough on that.”
Progressives and the vegans who love them are upset, decrying attacks on “freedom” and “capitalism”.
Leftist accounts are saying this is an assault on “freedom” and capitalism 🤦♂️🤡🌎💯
— Its Not Rocket Science (@UseCmnSensePlz) May 1, 2024
I might be more sensitive to that argument were it not for the electric vehicle mandates and the ban on gas stoves I have been battling for many years. What DeSantis did was a preemptive strike…especially as “experts” were lining up to foist cultured meat and insects on us because of animal “consciousness”.
Meanwhile, the agriculture industry is beginning to push back. We first noted the countermeasures being taken meat industry representatives and the United Nations environmental conference in Dubai earlier this year. Representatives went to the heart of environmental extremism and demanded they put “meat back on the menu“…and it was glorious.
More messages about cows’ real environmental impact are making their way to social media and the public dialog. The following snipped comes from Andrea, The Fit Agvocate. She farms in Minnesota with her husband and family, growing corn and owning a small commercial cow/calf herd and feedlot in the southwest corner of the state.
Beef is sustainable. pic.twitter.com/5ubtpGdRV6
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) May 1, 2024
The Cattleman’s Beef Board is following-up with its own sustainability assessments and offers a fascinating perspective on all the benefits we get from cows that are neglected by environmental extremists who complain about their farts.
Beyond delicious and nutritious steaks, roasts and burgers, there are hundreds of uses for cattle by-products. Do you own a car, take a bus or ride a bike? If so, you’re utilizing by-products in the tires on your vehicle and the asphalt on the road. Even items that may seem trivial, such as dyes, inks, adhesives and plastics are made from cattle by-products.
Here are a few ways in which cattle by-products touch our lives:
- Hides from cattle are tanned into leather becoming shoes, purses and wallets.
- Cattle organs and glands are used in the production of medicine, insulation, antifreeze, shampoos/conditioners and instrument strings. Some cattle tissue can even be used in human heart valve surgeries!5
- Photo film, vitamin capsules, charcoal and glass are all derived from bones and horns of cattle.
- Inedible beef fat provides us with airplane lubricants, hydraulic brake fluid, biodiesel and medicines.
It is also critical to consider the ecosystem services provided by raising beef. This includes mitigating the risk of wildfires, in addition to benefits from grazing lands such as water regulation & purification, carbon sequestration, and wildlife habitat. The value of these services, estimated at $14.8 billion6 combined with beef’s significant economic contribution to the U.S. economy, are further contributions that must be considered when looking at sustainability across the livestock industry.
While these are interesting developments that give me hope, I am quite mindful eco-activists always seem to find “experts” to produce The Science™ desired to push a narrative…for example, replacing beef and chicken with python meat.
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Comments
DeSantis is not afraid to actually get things done. He should consider running for President. It would be a welcome change.
He will. In 2028.
I agree wholeheartedly. If DeSantis were our nominee, there would never be a question about whether we would win the presidential election. Now all we hear every is about Trump’s extramarital affairs with porn stars and Playboy bunnies and hush money. Day after day after day.. Whose fault is this? It is all Trump’s fault. He has no control over his bodily functions. I feel sorry for Melania. No wonder she sleeps in separate beds.
“No wonder she sleeps in separate beds.” An interesting act of contortionism.
As someone on Twitter pointed out, Will to Power games get Will to Power prizes.
And the folks who started it are all always somehow surprised…
About half of college students believe that animals are equal in value to human beings. My professor friend used to challenge this belief at Cornell.
Audio here. Highly informative and entertaining.
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/805f8ba3-ad9c-4689-b70e-297f0277cff3
About half of college students value themselves more than anything on the planet. They’re also liars.
Do you work at FSU? What a nasty thing to say. These students are just young fools who have been brainwashed all of their lives in government schools. You and I were young fools too.
Love the guv, but I don’t agree with him on this one. I wouldn’t mandate it, I wouldn’t eat it, but if it makes somebody feel better about eating meat, I don’t think we should stop them.
I agree. Love DeSantis, but, this is the wrong posture to take, as a pro-free market conservative. The market/consumer preference will decide if this lab-grown meat is a viable product and concept. Government shouldn’t interfere in the process; that’s heavy-handed, Dhimmi-crat-style intervention and placing fingers on the scale.
Unless there are legitimate public health concerns around this stuff (and, there don’t appear to be), banning is inappropriate. It also feels like a total sop to the meat industry.
By all means. Eat bugs and insects. Bon Appetite.
Dude, that’s such a childish remark. I didn’t express a personal taste preference. I’m expressing an opinion that the market and consumers ahould decide the outcome. Common sense.
And, with respect to matters of taste, to each their own. You eat what you want, others eat what they want.
Don’t get obnoxious and snarky about your personal preferences.
Grow the hell up.
The Federal government bans the sale and manufacture of thousands upon thousands of products on a regular basis for no other reason than to pay off bribes…uh….satisfy trade agreements….
If the state legislature wants to protect the cattle industry at the expense of the lab grown meat industry within the state – I don’t have much of a problem with it. If you really want lab grown meat, just by it from Georgia.
I agree in general that the market should decide these things, However, like EVs, solar panels and wind turbines, the fake meat industry will be government sponsored in every way. So it won’t be a fair competition.
Further, this little market experiment will negatively impact the cattle and dairy industries. Industries which can’t be turned on and off with a switch.
The ability to come back from pastures getting sold off and developed into subdivisions, herds being sold off without the capability to rapidly replace, sell off of required facilities and equipment, loss off knowledge/motivation, etc. is questionable at best. Once people move off the land they seldom go back.
Bottom line, it’s not worth the risk just to accommodate the unreasonable fantasies of the woke. Nor is it fair to the cattlemen and dairy farmers.
The solution is to stop mandating and/or subsidizing EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines, not to toss out the free market and endorse the very tactics you decry being used against you.
Gee, if only we had thought of opposing all those mandates. Oh that’s right, we did.
I’m talking real world, not a Pollyanna one.
It’s cute that you think this product would be allowed to fail on the free market.
I agree with your free-market posture. In the current environment, though, it looks passive to say, “Let the market decide.” DeSantis has found a way for all of us to be heard: No, we are not going down that path. He can’t very well prohibit artificial foods from being sold in Florida, but he can speak loudly for natural foods and for the rest of us.
It is worth remarking that the Left’s obsession with what we eat (under the pretense of science) is a cultural statement. Italy’s refusal to accept this (and Italians really care about food culture) is a cultural statement. DeSantis regularly finds ways to represent our side of the cultural wars in effective ways. His intelligence and ability to articulate cultural issues sets him apart. He is the anti-Obama.
It is the result of Will to Power Games.
Once one side starts them, the other side must respond in kind or be destroyed. Such is the nature of Will to Power.
It’s performative theater. Politically it’s necessary because far too many people need to be told that they are loved and cared for while their enemies are being punished.
DeSantis goes for the maximum points with clickbait conservatives.
Put-downs don’t count as ideas.
Eric, I fully agree with you. Let me start by saying that I would vote for DeSantis in a heartbeat after Trump, but on this issue I disagree with him. Let the marketplace be the arbiter of consumers’ revealed preferences, not government diktat, and without government subsidies or taxes. If there are consumers who prefer lab-grown meat, fine, and if not, also fine. By the same token, crazy environmentalists and others should not be allowed to ban natural animal products, and they should not be allowed to restrict agriculture because of so-called climate change.
The idea of lab-grown meat isn’t necessarily wrong. Done correctly, it could significantly reduce the cost of meat while giving good quality.
However, my objection to it is the fact that I know EXACTLY what the insane lunatics on the left would do, because they’ve done it before.
First, use its existence to utterly outlaw normal beef.
Then, in the name of ‘the science’, suddenly change guidelines on how much fat/protein is in their fake beef, based on their ‘feelings’. And since normal beef has been outlawed, you have nowhere else to turn.
They’re so pathetically predictable.
Yes, by all means, let’s all eat Soylent Green. Thank you Donald Trump.
Trump celebrates gay marriage at his resort in Florida, with hundreds of gay couples attending. Then he celebrates transsexuals, by allowing them to enter his beauty pageants. I wonder, does Trump endorse drag queen story hour at your local library? I think the answer is yes. Not that there is anything wrong with this, of course.
Another social engineering project supported/forced on the population by the fed govt.
In what world do you think this reduces cost?
Ye Old Commercials:
https://youtu.be/756Ebep1xJA?si=IKBqc6ba8r1smmMW
Morningstar soy bacon strips are good. Just don’t overnuke them.
Does Lucifer Morningstar make them?
;-{)}}}
I would do it from orbit just to be sure.
Most Morningstar products are good, and I used to eat them until they changed their formula to include milk. I’m sure they’re still good, but I no longer eat them.
Florida is a massive market this will have a major impact and is without doubt a good move.
This is the right thing to do, and it didn’t cost you your freedom libertarians.
It is the wrong thing to do, and it is an attack on freedom. Doing this makes him a Democrat.
Prove it, please.
Res ipso loquitur. Attacking the freedom to produce what one likes and to consume what one likes is by definition an attack on freedom.
If you have any ideas about how biotech works, you will realize just how unsustainable and energetically costly lab grown meat would be. If you move this stuff to the scale of the beef industry, the costs and energy usages becomes exorbitant and ghastly.
It takes far more money, time, and energy to keep a collection of cells alive that are not part of a whole viable organism than it does to just raise and sustain living organisms that can live outdoors without air conditioning (refrigeration/freezing required for lab grown meat), expensive liquid supplements, and constant culture medium changes.
Proponents would counter that animal meat requires at least some of those costs post-mortem but that is farm to table via the store. Lab grown meat will require all of those costs during the farming replacement stages as well. It’s absolutely ridiculous that anyone would support this farce.
I can only guess that the goal is to wipe out traditional agriculture, replace it with something designed to fail like this boondoggle, and say “oh well, now you eat bugs”
I’m sorry to go on but I am just shocked at how many people are ignorant of how foolish this is.
This stuff….
….has no thermal balance so it’s temperature must be tightly regulated by climate controls and put into dormancy
….has no digestive system so highly purified and specially formulated nutrient concentrates have to be added to make it grow and maintain
….has no cardiovascular or renal systems so fresh nutrients and wastes must be circulated and filtered regularly
…has no immune system so all of these ingredients have to be added under sterile, aseptic conditions. Contaminations will occur at a much higher rate than in livestock and will spread like wildfire through a facility since there’s nothing to stop them.
These issues cost an exorbitant amount to regulate. The “experiment” of “can we grow meat in a lab?” was done academically. It was not done practically or at a large scale. This is a total farce to try and push a WEF mandate for reduced animal protein consumption.
“Progressives and the vegans who love them are upset, decrying attacks on “freedom” and “capitalism”.
Now do guns.
How much crossover between these people and the anti GMO crowd?
I would think the vegetarian/vegan market would be repulsed. Not sure who they hope to sell to, unless it can be made to taste like more expensive cut of meat at lower price. I understand it is much more expensive at this time.
I’ve been a Desantis fan until now, but this seriously harms my faith in him. He has shown himself to be no better than a Democrat protectionist, an enemy of free trade and free choice. The fact that Democrats do the same is not a defense, it’s an indictment.
If people want to make this product, and other people want to buy it, they have an inherent God-given right to do so and no government has any right to interfere with them, let alone in order to protect some favored group.
I would be a customer for this product once the price came down to something reasonable. Not all the time, unless it was cheaper than real meat, but occasionally. And I know many people whose lives would be greatly enhanced by such a product. Maybe the market can’t sustain it, but that’s for the market to figure out, not for any person, committee, or legislature to decide. What he’s proposing ought to be unconstitutional; it’s unfortunate that it’s not.
Musk can use this for food source for his colony on mars?
Take a cue from the leftists in and out of the Federal government: ridicule it and tax it. Don’t call it meat, call it “meat”. Jack the price up with well thought out taxation. If the misguided idealists want it, let them pay for it.
.
Economically, vat-grown meat makes little sense, for reasons posted by others in this thread. It’s a SciFi trope, for conditions under which actual animal herds are difficult to impossible. But cultured meat isn’t wrapped in its own low-tech support systems nor can you easily tell by looking at a vat if the vat contents are “sick” and dangerous to consume, like you usually can with a live animal.
The governor’s concern seems to be that vat-grown meat will be a magnet for anti Real Meat ™ ideologues to funnel govt moneys to at the expense of everyone else, like “sustainable” energy and EVs have turned into. Would it be possible just to tax the in-state production or sale of these goods to wring the govt monies back out of govt subsidized goods? There’s a case to be made that the govt should get out of the business of deciding which competing tech should be encouraged at the expense of industries that didn’t bribe legislators sufficiently to protect themselves.
That said, no prob with banning the sale of bug carcasses for human consumption. We already do it for “cute” animals like pets, why not for “ewwwww” animals like bugs?