We’re not fans of fake meat. It isn’t better for the environment, and it isn’t better for you. But we won’t tell you not to buy or eat it. We will tell you that you are being fed lies, but knock yourself out if you don’t care or are comfortable with the fantasy. Eating fake meat is your business. The state of Florida, however, took a different tack. Earlier this year, it banned the manufacture, distribution, and sale of fake meat.
“We’re fighting back against an ideology that ultimately wants to eliminate meat production in the U.S. and around the globe,” DeSantis said. “In the state of Florida we’ve put down the marker very clearly; we stand with agriculture. We stand with the cattle ranchers. We stand with our farmers because we understand it’s important for the backbone of the state. It’s important for our culture. It’s important for our heritage so the bill that I’m going to sign today is going to say basically take your fake, lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
A company called Upside Foods sued, claiming “its lab-grown chicken should be treated like conventional poultry under federal law.”
Upside Foods petitioned the court for an injunction to stop the ban’s enforcement, claiming that Florida’s restrictions contradicted federal law, namely the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA). They argued that the PPIA gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) exclusive authority over poultry inspection and labeling, which should extend to their cultivated chicken products.
Problem?
I don’t think the USDA’s definition of anything should supersede a state’s or its people’s right to decide such things, but assuming it does, the Judge could find no evidence that what Upside Foods peddles “fell under USDA definitions of “poultry” or “poultry products” as intended in federal law. It has to be chicken to be regulated as chicken. I’m not sure you’d get that ruling from every federal judge but this one was on board.
Federal law defines poultry products as any carcass or product made from a bird, but the judge found this definition did not clearly encompass cultivated meats developed from cells instead of whole animals. Without a precise federal standard for cultivated meats, the judge ruled that Florida’s law could stand because it does not directly contradict any federal law regarding poultry.3
The downside for Upside is that fake chicken speakeasies might be the only recourse in Florida: underground eateries that serve exotic fake meats from a lab in someone’s basement. Or they could sell it in Colorado, New York, and California and be happy with deceiving those millions.
