Select U.S. restaurants have begun serving laboratory-grown chicken, spurring long wait times for reservations by diners curious to taste it.
In June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave final approval for a few California-based companies to begin selling lab-produced chicken across the country.
While it may be years before lab-grown meat is available at grocery stores, a handful of states are tightening rules on labeling the new food, which is produced by growing cells acquired from living animals into muscle tissue.
A woman shops for chicken at a supermarket Sept. 13, 2022, in Santa Monica, Calif.
Consumers interested in sustainable foods that avoid the slaughter of animals are driving the growing industry. But, pushed by the cattle and poultry industries, more states are defining what can be sold to consumers as “meat” and are requiring prominent labels on products cultured in labs.
Under a USDA agreement, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat, as well as the latter’s manufacturing partner JOINN Biologics, will sell their products with the label “cell-cultivated chicken,” while the department develops further labeling rules.
But some states are imposing their own additional requirements.
Texas passed the most recent bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May. As of Sept. 1, cultivated products in Texas must include the term “cell-cultured,” “lab-grown” or similar wording on packaging near the name of the product, in type at least the same size as the text around it.
The Texas Farm Bureau, an advocacy group of farmers and ranchers, listed the bill as one of its legislative priorities this year.
In 2018, Missouri became the first state to pass legislation requiring different labeling for traditional meat versus products not derived from livestock or poultry.
Such products marketed in Missouri as meat without the words “plant-based,” “veggie,” “lab-grown,” “lab-created” or a similar phrase before or after the product’s name may be referred to a county prosecutor and the attorney general for potential violations, according to a memorandum from the state. The products also must state that they are “made from plants,” “grown in a lab” or a comparable disclosure.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming enacted similar legislation the following year.
In 2020, Oklahoma enacted a law giving state officials the authority to enforce meat labeling practices.
This year, Iowa considered a bill to prohibit lab-grown proteins in public schools, but it didn’t pass. A Michigan labeling measure remains in committee.
Kentucky’s 2019 law deems a food misbranded if it is labeled as meat but contains cultured animal tissue.
The cattle industry in Kentucky is extremely important to the economy, said state Rep. Michael Meredith, a Republican who sponsored the measure. People are interested in knowing about the origin and makeup of their food now more than ever before, he said, and legislators wanted to ensure labels are clear.
“I think the public is very skeptical of the product,” Meredith said. “I have talked with people — and I come from a fairly rural area — and folks are just appalled, and it’s not even funny.”
He added, “I think it’s going be really, really hard to push something like this in rural America as a market.”
But the cell-cultured meat industry has made significant strides in recent years. As of 2022, the global number of cultivated meat companies rose to 156, with headquarters in 26 countries, according to the Good Food Institute’s State of the Industry report. The nonprofit, which advocates in favor of protein alternatives and prefers the term “cultivated” meat, found that all-time investments in the industry had reached $2.8 billion globally last year.
The institute argues that U.S. state legislatures are taking steps to undermine the market through “label censorship,” which it calls unconstitutional and unnecessary.
“It’s always been our position that state label censorship through legislative efforts were kind of a ‘solution in search of a problem,’” said Laura Braden, associate director of regulatory affairs and an attorney at the Good Food Institute. “Consumer choice rather than label censorship should determine winners and losers in the marketplace.”
Still, legislators in states such as Wyoming, where the law requires labels on lab-grown meat to include “containing cell cultured product” or similar wording, say they want labels clearly understood by the public.
“It never hurts to have our Department of Agriculture doing this work alongside the USDA,” Wyoming Republican state Sen. Brian Boner said. “We’re just going to have a more robust system where folks will know exactly what they’re purchasing when it comes to meat products.”
But such measures have met resistance.
The Missouri law prompted a lawsuit arguing the state made “a brazen attempt to stifle the growing grocery category of plant-based meats,” according to a statement from the ACLU of Missouri, which is part of the lawsuit. Including the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Good Food Institute and Tofurky, a plant-based protein company, a coalition of organizations challenged the law for violating the First Amendment.
“I don’t think this was about consumer confusion,” said Amanda Howell, a managing attorney at Animal Legal Defense Fund. “I don’t think this is about ensuring clear and non-misleading labels. I think this was about taking First Amendment rights away from companies and making them call themselves things that you know would be unintelligible to consumers. And if a consumer can’t tell what a product is, they’re not going to buy it.”
