Toxic Exposures
Federal Judge Upholds Florida Ban on Lab-Grown Meat, as Other States Propose Similar Bans
The ban will remain in place while the lawsuit challenging its legality moves through the courts. Upside Foods, which makes a cultivated chicken product, sued to overturn the ban, which was signed into law on May 1.
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A federal judge earlier this month rejected a request by California-based Upside Foods for a preliminary injunction against Florida’s new law banning the manufacture, distribution and sale of “cultivated,” or lab-grown meat.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the ban into law on May 1, making it a second-degree misdemeanor to produce or sell lab-grown meat in the state. The law took effect in July.
Upside Foods, which makes cultivated chicken, sued Florida in August, alleging the ban is unconstitutional and violates two federal laws that preempt Florida from imposing the ban.
A preliminary injunction is typically issued in a lawsuit if the court finds the plaintiff has a good chance of winning its case — a “substantial likelihood of success on the merits,” However, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said Upside’s argument, which boiled down to “if it’s a poultry product, states can’t ban it,” was insufficient.
Just because a product falls within the scope of the federal Poultry Products Inspection Act and is under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) regulatory authority does not mean a state is “expressly preempted from banning the sale of that particular kind of poultry product,” Walker wrote.
Upside argued that the ban imposed ingredient and manufacturing requirements that clashed with
provisions of the Poultry Products Inspection Act. However, Walker said Upside was unable to identify any federal law or regulation that created an “ingredient requirement” for cultivated meat. He also said that because the company didn’t produce its lab-grown meat in Florida, the manufacturing ban didn’t affect its premises, operations or facilities.
The ruling means the ban will remain in place while the lawsuit challenging its legality moves through the courts.
“We are not surprised by the judge’s rejection of Upside’s preliminary injunction,” Florida Sen. Jay Collins, who co-sponsored the original bill, told The Defender. “The dangers of cultivated meat far outweigh any misleading environmental claims. Floridians will not be lectured by billionaires like Bill Gates on how to feed their families.”
Upside’s attorney, Suranjen Sen from the Institute for Justice, said in a press release that the company plans to appeal the decision and is “confident that the courts will ultimately recognize that Florida cannot ban products simply to protect local industries from honest competition.”
A bench trial is set for Monday, Aug. 18, 2025.
Upside struggled to become profitable
Lab-grown or cultivated meat is produced from cultured stem cells taken from live animals or an animal cell bank and then reproduced in bioreactors using techniques borrowed from Big Pharma.
The cells are “fed” a mixture of sugars, amino and fatty acids, salts and vitamins to make them proliferate quickly. Once they’ve grown into a mass or a sheet — depending on the manufacturer — they are formed into meat-looking shapes like cutlets or nuggets.
Although the companies promote lab-grown meat in part by claiming it has environmental benefits, the process is energy-intensive. Research from the University of California, Davis, found that cultured meat’s environmental impact is likely “orders of magnitude” higher than real meat, based on current production methods.
Attorney Ray Flores, who worked in the natural health industry for 35 years, told The Defender that even if it provides environmental benefits, “Any environmental benefit is greatly outweighed by the possible dangers that these cutting-edge products may pose to one’s health.”
An investigation by The New York Times revealed several incidents during the development of some of Upside’s products that raised safety concerns. The company in 2018 found its chicken cell line contaminated with mouse cells. And in 2019, the cell line was found to be contaminated with rat cells.
Yet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Upside’s meat was safe for human consumption in 2022, and the USDA approved the sale of products by Upside Foods and Good Meat — the first two companies to go through the regulatory approval process — in June 2023.
That approval made the U.S. the second country in the world, behind Singapore, to allow sales of lab-grown meat. In January, Israel green-lighted the sale of steaks made from cultivated beef cells, The Associated Press reported.
Since the USDA approval, however, Upside has struggled to become profitable.
Upside doesn’t have products available in stores. Partnerships with restaurants are primarily how the company gets its products to consumers.
It had sold its lab-grown chicken to one restaurant in Miami and was planning to showcase it at Miami’s Art Basel event before the ban took effect, according to the judgment.
However, Crunchbase reported that the company halted its plans to develop a major facility in Glenview, Illinois, and restaurants that had tried it out have since pulled it from their menus. San Francisco Michelin-star restaurant Bar Crenn, its final sale venue, confirmed it was pulling the lab-grown meat from the menu in February.
In the original complaint, Upside and the Institute for Justice claim that the “growing patchwork of conflicting state laws governing cultivated meat” makes it more difficult for Upside to partner with national meat distributors “who generally will not carry products they cannot lawfully sell in every state.”
It also makes it more difficult for them to partner with restaurants. If not for the ban, they said, they would be reaching out to several restaurants to create partnerships.
Following the Florida ban, Upside laid off 26 workers.
More states move to ban lab-grown meat, federal regulators eye labeling requirements
A few weeks after Florida passed its bill, Alabama passed a similar law making the manufacture, sale or distribution of food products made from cultured animal cells a Class C misdemeanor, with fines ranging from $100 to $10,000.
Iowa’s governor in May signed a bill prohibiting schools from buying lab-grown meat products and requiring clear labeling for lab-grown meats sold in other venues.
Five other states have proposed similar laws. And in August, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen signed an executive order banning the state government from purchasing it.
The USDA and the FDA share regulatory responsibility for cultivated meat products. Under the Biden administration’s 2022 plan to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovation, the USDA also announced plans to issue draft guidance on the pre-approval consultation process and the agencies plan to propose rules for labeling cell-cultured meat and poultry sometime in 2024.
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