Texas sued over its lab-grown meat ban

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Two cultivated meat companies have filed a lawsuit against officials in Texas over the law that bans the sales of lab-grown meat in the state for two years.

California-based companies UPSIDE Foods, which makes cultivated chicken, and Wildtype, which makes cultivated salmon are suing Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas Health and Human Services, and Travis County, accusing them of government overreach.

“This law has nothing to do with protecting public health and safety and everything to do with protecting conventional agriculture from innovative out-of-state competition,” said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm that is representing UPSIDE Foods and Wildtype. “That is not a legitimate use of government power.”

The background

In June, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 261, which bans the sale of lab-grown meat in Texas for two years. Lab-grown meat, also known as cell cultivated meat or cultured meat, is made from taking animal cells and growing them in an incubator or bioreactor until they form an edible product.

Lawmakers expressed concerns during the Senate committee hearing on the bill that cultured meat will disrupt traditional family farms in Texas, as well as concerns over product labelling and safety.

The ban went into effect on Monday.

Before the ban, there was only one restaurant in Texas selling cultured protein. In the last month and a half, OTOKO, a high-end sushi restaurant in Austin, included Wildtype salmon into the omakase menu.

Why cultured meat companies are suing

Cultured meat company founders and their lawyers held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce a lawsuit over SB 261, saying the ban is “unconstitutional” and “un-American.”

“We do believe that Americans should have the freedom to choose what to eat,” said Justin Kolbeck, a co-founder of Wildtype. “We think even if you hate the idea of cultivated seafood, we hope you agree that we're on a slippery slope if we're handing over intensely personal choices like what to feed ourselves and our families to the government.”

Sherman, the lead counsel on the case, added that the federal government has approved cultivated meat as safe for consumers. In 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave approval for two companies, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat, to sell cell-cultivated chicken and a year later, the U.S. Department for Agriculture (USDA) approved the label of “cell-cultivated chicken” for the products.

As of July, four companies have received regulatory clearance to sell cultured meat in the United States, according to the Good Food Institute.

Texas lawmakers and the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, who testified in favor of SB 261 before it was passed, said that they are concerned about the safety of cultured meat products.

“The USDA and The FDA have agreed that these products are safe,” Sherman said. “If that's not good enough for some consumers, there's a simple solution, don't eat it.”

Kolbeck added that Wildtype salmon doesn’t have the contaminants that are commonly found in traditional seafood, such as heavy metals, antibiotics, microplastics, and other pollutants.

“Making America healthy requires innovation,” Kolbeck said.

What cattle raisers and lawmakers are saying

The Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment but previously, Carl Ray Polk Jr., the president of the association, said in an interview that SB 261 isn’t about banning competition.

“We're not pushing back on these products because we have a concern about competition,” Polk said, adding that the cattle industry has welcomed competition with poultry, fish, and plant-based proteins.

Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, the author of the bill, said that there are “concerns over the transparency and labeling, risk of contamination, and long term health impacts of consuming cell culture products” when he presented the bill during a March Senate committee hearing.

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, asked the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association if they see the lab-grown meat companies as part of the Make America Healthy Again Movement or against it.

“I would see the lab grown meat as against it,” said Dan Gattis, a rancher and lawyer from Georgetown.

Broader impact

Texas is the seventh state to ban lab-grown meat and this is the second lawsuit in the nation over such bans. Last year, the Institute for Justice also filed a similar lawsuit in Florida. If Texas’s ban on cultured meat sales is lifted, Wildtype said in the lawsuit that they would immediately resume selling their cultivated salmon at OTOKO and reach out to other chefs in Texas to pursue partnerships. However, the state may not immediately see a surge in the sales of cultured proteins. Cultured meat scientists and experts agree that the industry is not ready to sell their products at a large scale yet.

Disclosure: Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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