The Mississippi house A law has just passed by representatives that is prohibited cultivated meat. This makes Mississippi the third state to forbid meat, which was grown in tubs from small rehearsals of animal cells.
The Mississippi Bill It will make it illegal for everyone to produce, sell or distribute cultivated meat in the state. Violation of the law would be an offense that is punished with a fine of no more than 500 US dollars and/or up to three months in the district prison. Similar laws passed in last year in Florida And Alabama Also wear potential prison conditions or fines of up to 500 US dollars.
The legislation is now waiting for the signature of Governor Tate Reeves and becomes laws unless he makes against the invoice. The agricultural commissioner of Mississippi, Andy Gipson, criticized the cultivated meat industry and supported a legislative template from 2019, which prevented cultivated meat products as meat in the state. In 2024 he published a contribution on his website that praised the cultivated meat bans in Florida and Alabama. “I want my steak to come from farm beef, not from a Petri-Dish from a laboratory,” he wrote.
“This has a very, very, strong feeling for political theater,” says Suzi Gerber, managing director of the association for meat, poultry and seafood innovation, a commercial group that represents the cultivated meat industry. The actual effects of the law in one of these states would be minimal, she says, since cultivating meat was not offered for sale in any of them.
The Republican representatives Bill Pigott and Lester Carpenter presented Mississippi’s law in January 2025. She said goodbye to both houses without individual voices. But similar laws in other countries had less a smooth way. A Wyoming Bill That would have been banned meat Senate vote in February.
“I was surprised, but encouraged the results in these countries,” says Gerber. In Wyoming, some senators argued for better packaging and labeling regulations instead of a complete ban on the cultivation meat, while in South Dakota Some legislators rejected The ban that argues would inhibit free trade.
Consider other states to have adopted laws similar to in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. A legislative template in Georgia in January Would make it illegal to sell cultivated meat. In Nebraska an invoice that would dignity Prohibition of meat At the request of governor Jim Plens, the state was introduced in January.
The Florida ban is currently being denied in a court proceedings by the California meat firm on the latest Foods and the Institute of Justice, a non -profit law firm for public interests. The case argues that Florida’s ban violates two separate parts of the US constitution that cover the intergovernmental trade and the relationship between federal and state law. In October a federal judge Inquiry of foods from foods about an injunction This would have stopped the enforcement of the ban on Florida’s ban on cultivating meat.
The steady drip of the state bans has summarized the investor enthusiasm for cultivated meat. Were only $ 226 million Invested in startups for cultivated meat in 2023, clearly from 922 million US dollars in 2022. In early 2024 Workers releasedWhile the scififoods based in California closed Overall later this year.
However, there are some signs that the industry weathered this headwind. On March 8, the cultivating meat company Mission Barns, based in San Francisco, announced that the Food and Drug Administration had no further questions about the safety of its cultivated pork fat product, an important step towards selling the product in the USA. Only two other companies that only food and only eat have received a similar letter from the FDA. Now Mission Barns only has to be approved by the US Agriculture Ministry to start in the USA.
