Upside Foods, a cultured meat company, is suing the state of Florida over its ban on lab-grown meat, saying the state’s legislation banning the sale of cultured meat is unconstitutional.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the ban in May, calling the legislation “a push back against the global elite’s efforts to force the world to eat meat or bugs grown in petri dishes to achieve their authoritarian goals.” A way to plan.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Upside Foods and the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, claim Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat is intended to protect the state’s cattle industry and that the law is unconstitutional. The complaint alleges that SB 1084 violates the Supremacy Clause and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, as well as two federal laws regulating the inspection and distribution of meat and poultry products.
“Our Constitution gives Congress the power to establish and enforce a national common market so that people can decide for themselves what products they want to buy on interstate markets,” Paul Sherman, a senior staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, told a hearing indicated above. “States simply do not have the authority to isolate themselves from USDA and FDA-approved products.”
Alternatives to traditional meat products, including plant-based and cultured meat, have become a wedge in the culture war between liberals and conservatives. As a result, companies that offer alternatives to animal products find themselves targeted by state-level laws that limit or outright ban them from selling their products.
Upside and the Institute for Justice argue that Florida’s ban on cultured meat is intended to protect the state’s cattle industry from out-of-state competition. The ban therefore violates the “dormant portion” of the Commerce Clause, which prohibits state protectionism, Upside claimed. The complaint states that during the signing event, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, surrounded by ranchers, “spoke in front of a podium that read ‘Save Our Beef.'”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who is named as a defendant, called the lawsuit “ridiculous.”
“Lab-grown ‘meat’ has not been proven safe enough for consumers, and the liberal agenda is pushing for farm closures. Food security is a matter of national security, and our farmers are the first line of defense,” Simpson said in a statement explain. “States are the laboratories of democracy, and Florida has the right not to be a corporate guinea pig. Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.
But Upside’s complaint says Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat is about protectionism, not food safety, and points to DeSantis’ press conference announcing the ban as evidence.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Upside’s products would be safe to eat by 2022, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the sale of Upside and competitor Good Meat’s products the following year.
Upside argued that the Florida ban also hurt the company’s business elsewhere in the country. Florida’s ban on cultured meat is the first in the nation and has inspired copycat legislation across the country. Alabama banned lab-grown meat in May, though the bill doesn’t take effect until October. Lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have introduced similar bans. In the complaint, Upside and the Institute for Justice claim that the “increasing conflagration of conflicting state laws governing cultured meat” has made it more difficult for Upside to work with national meat distributors, “who often do not carry products they cannot Products legally sold in every country”. state. ”
According to the indictment filed in the Northern District of Florida, Upside began working with a Miami chef before Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat took effect on July 1. The chef, who is not named in the complaint, has begun making plans with Upside to host a wine tasting event on February 20, 2025, at the Miami South Beach Wine and Food Festival. The company “identified other chefs in Miami and Tallahassee” in early December who were interested in distributing its products, according to the complaint. Florida’s injunction now prevents those activities from occurring because Upside’s involvement could result in criminal penalties for itself and its potential business partners, the complaint said.
Upside is asking the court to declare Florida’s cultured meat ban unconstitutional and issue preliminary and permanent injunctions against the law. At a press conference, IJ lawyer Sherman said Upside wanted the ban to take effect before Art Basel.
“If consumers don’t like the idea of cultured meat, there’s a simple solution,” Sherman said. “They don’t have to eat it. But they can’t make the decision for other consumers.
