Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a first-in-the-nation ban on lab-grown meat Wednesday, calling the product a threat to agriculture akin to citrus greening disease.
"What we're protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate," DeSantis said, according to Florida Politics.
The Republican governor said the "fake meat" products were part of a broader conspiracy by Davos elites to usher in social credit scores and eradicate farming in America.
"One of the things that these folks want to do is they want to eliminate meat production in the United States — actually throughout the world," DeSantis said.
The ban goes into effect on July 1, according to the legislation.
Dusty Holley, director of field services for the Florida Cattlemen's Association, panned lab-grown meat as an unknown and possibly unsafe substitute for animal protein.
"This cultivated protein, we know it isn't beef, we know it isn't meat," Holley said, according to Florida Politics. "Meat comes from an animal."
The trade group reportedly supported the newly-signed legislation.
In a letter to state lawmakers in March, a group of 38 biotech investors and hedge fund leaders argued that a comprehensive ban on cultivated meat would throttle research in Florida. They also claimed that the nascent industry should not be viewed as a threat to those raising livestock, but as a partner, given that artificial means of growing crops have become standard practice.
"Passage of this legislation will have economic ramifications for Florida," the letter stated. "Biotechnology and biomanufacturing are among the fastest-growing industries in the United States, with biomanufacturing leveraging biological systems to produce goods at a commercial scale, offering innovative solutions across various sectors including plastics, fuels, foods, and pharmaceuticals."
Scientific research on the process of creating meat in laboratories is exempt from the ban, so long as the products are not made available for commercial sale.
At the bill signing press conference, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson suggested that food security in Florida could be improved by banning synthetic meat.
"Who wants to have a biomass shipped to their house, put into the tank, rolling in the lab and then put it through a 3D printer to make it look like a steak that you want to eat?" Simpson asked, according to Florida Politics. "Well, we're not going to do that in Florida, right? We're not going to participate. And let me even go one step further — and how bad this is for Californians that are participating in this crap — is that Italy's even banned this."
Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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