“This ban is a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers, and consumers,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement following the bill’s passage. “Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”
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Texas joins Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska in enacting new laws this year; Alabama and Florida did so last year. In March, the Oklahoma House approved a similar bill that did not advance out of the Senate this session.
All the information I’ve been able to find is that lab-grown meat scaling to anything like the commercial meat industry is a pipe dream. At least in the current state, the industrial requirements make economies of scale impossible.
I think this is more Texas republicans giving their ranch-owning donors a meaningless gesture of fealty.
ETA: here is a link to an article with more information https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
I think that’s the key. The cost has been going down over time, it’ll get there eventually.
Its kind of like solar power. That seemed like a pipe dream for a long time as well but it just kept getting cheaper and cheaper.
You’re talking about the cost to grow boutique lab grown meat that is the same as animal meat but grown in a vat. That cost 10,000 dollars a kilogram right now.
Go taste an impossible meat burger someplace and check the price and see its only slightly more expensive than animal meat, even now in the relatively early days. Beyond meat is a 4 billion dollar company. Its a viable business model.
The law is talking about lab-grown animal protein, not vegetable derived meat substitutes like Impossible or Beyond Meat.
fair point