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

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.”

The post North Carolina Is the Latest State To Try To Restrict Lab-Grown Meat appeared first on Reason.com.