Texas banned lab-grown meat. What’s next for the industry?

A legal struggle for the laboratory's meat started in Texas last week. On September 1st, a two -year ban on technology came into force in the whole state. The following day, two companies filed a lawsuit against state officials. The two companies, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods, are part of a growing industry that aims to bring new types of food to the plate. These products, which are often referred to by the industry as cultivated meat, take living animal cells and grow in the laboratory to produce food without slaughtering animals. Texas accompanies six other US states and the country of Italy to ban these products. These legal challenges face an industry that is still in its infancy, obstacles to the industry and already compares many challenges before they can achieve consumers in a sensible way. The agricultural sector forms a strong part of the global greenhouse gas emissions, with the cattle alone between 10% and 20% of climate pollution. Alternative meat products, including those bred in a laboratory, could help to cut the greenhouse gases from agriculture. However, the industry is still in its early days. In the USA, only a handful of companies can legally sell products, including chicken, pork fat and salmon. Australia, Singapore and Israel also allow some companies to sell within their limits. Upside Foods, which produces cultivated chicken, was one of the first to receive legal approval to sell its products in the United States in 2022. Wildtype Foods, one of the latest additions to the US market, started selling its cultivated salmon in June. On the head, wild types and other companies for cultivated people, they still work to scale production. Products are generally available from pop-up events or in special menus in high-end restaurants. (I visited San Francisco to try Uvsides Cult-Huhn in a restaurant awarded with a Michelin star a few years ago.) Until recently, the only place where you reliably grown meat in the laboratory was a sushi restaurant in Austin. From July, Otoko showed Wildtyps cultivated salmon on a special tasting menu. (The chef told the local publication culture map of Austin that the cultivated fish tastes like wild salmon, and it was included in a dish with grilled yellow -tail with a different type of fishing.) The still limited reach of the laboratory that the laboratory meat does not prevent the technological effect. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, whose President Carl Ray Polk Jr., also testified to support the bill in a hearing of the committee in March. "The introduction of laboratory meat could disturb the traditional animal markets and have an impact on rural communities and family farms," ​​said Perry during the meeting. In an interview with Texas Tribune, Polk said that the two -year moratorium would help the industry to set checks before the products could be sold. He alsoed on how clearly companies will mark their products for cultivating meat. "The purpose of these bans is to kill the industry for the cultivated people before it comes to the ground," said Myra Pasek, General Counsel of adult foods, by email. The company is working on scaling its production and launching the product. Others in the industry have similar concerns. "Moratories that are sold not only refuse to make new decisions and economic growth, but also send cool signals to researchers and entrepreneurs across the country," said Pepin Andrew Tuma, the Vice President of Politics and Government Relations for the Good Food Institute, a non -profit thinker who focused on alternative proteins. (The group is not involved in the lawsuit.) One day after the moratorium on September 1, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods filed a lawsuit that questioned the ban and Jennifer Shuford, Commissioner of the Texas Ministry of Health. A lawsuit was not necessarily part of the scale-up plan. "This was really a last way out for us," says Justin Kolbeck, co -founder and CEO of Wildtype. The cultivation of cells to form meat in the laboratory is not easy - some companies have spent a decade or more to produce considerable amounts of a product that people want to eat. These legal battles will certainly not help. This article comes from the weekly climate crimetter from with Technology Review, the weekly climate newsletter. To get it every Wednesday in your inbox, register here.