Nebraska could become the latest US state to ban cultivated meat after Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order to limit its sales.
Pillen agreed to create “strict guidelines when it comes to state agencies and its contractors from obtaining lab-grown meat”, according to a statement.
He has also directed the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) to initiate a rulemaking process to make sure that any lab-grown meat products sold in stores are “properly labelled” and are not marketed next to natural meat on the same shelves.
“Nebraska farmers and ranchers, like those here today, are committed to producing the best food products anywhere,” Pillen said.
“We feed the world and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else and I will defend those practices with my last breath.”
On top of the executive order and the drafting of rules and regulations through the NDA, Pillen announced that in the upcoming legislative session he would be working with senators to draft legislation banning lab-grown meat in Nebraska.
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“Nebraska consumers want to know and deserve to know that what they are purchasing is safe, wholesome meat and not a lab-grown product,” said NDA director Sherry Vinton. A public hearing has been scheduled for 8 October to consider those draft regulations.
Just Food has contacted the cell-based meat advocaate the Good Food Institute for comment.
In May, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation which bans the sale of lab-grown meat in the state at the beginning of May.
He said the state was “fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals”.
He added that his administration would continue supporting its “local farmers and ranchers” in a bid to “save our beef.”
The ban covers the manufacture, sale or distribution of cultivated meat in the state. It came into effect on 1 July.
However, last month the Institute for Justice (IJ) – a non-profit, public interest law firm – has partnered with cell-based meat firm Upside Foods to file a lawsuit to challenge the southern US state’s ban which they describe as “economic protectionism”.
Florida was not the first state looking to prohibit the sale of lab-grown meat in the US. In January, Alabama state senators introduced a similar bill. Last year, the state of Texas also passed a law that would require cultivated-meat products to include front-of-pack messaging that indicates they are “cell-cultured” or “lab-grown”.
