Lab-grown meat ban arises to challenge labeling bill in SD Legislature

Yahoo

04-02-2025

State Rep. John Sjaarda, R-Valley Springs, testifies on Feb. 4, 2025, to the South Dakota House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee about his bill to ban lab-grown meat. (Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight)
PIERRE — Competing views about lab-grown meat are pitting some farmers and ranchers against each other at the South Dakota Capitol, where a legislative committee advanced a ban of the product after previously endorsing legislation that would only require it to be clearly labeled.
The labeling bill already passed both chambers and went to the governor for his decision to sign or veto it. The ban took its first legislative step Tuesday by earning the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee's approval by a vote of 8-5. Another bill that would restrict state spending in support of lab-grown meat earned unanimous approval, and both are now headed to the state House of Representatives.
Lab-grown meat should be clearly labeled, panel of SD lawmakers decides
Republican Rep. Jana Hunt, a rancher from Dupree, is a member of the committee. She summarized the feelings of some ranchers who said lab-grown meat is an attack on their livelihoods and is too new for its potential food safety implications to be fully understood.
'We need meat that can stand on its own feet,' Hunt said.
A lobbyist for the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association took a similar stance, while lobbyists for other agricultural groups expressed a different view.
Speakers against the ban said South Dakota farmers and ranchers dislike it when people who oppose animal slaughter or the use of herbicides on crops try to ban or restrict products resulting from those practices.
Lobbyist Matthew Bogue spoke for a group of South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation members who were in the audience. He said most of his members would never purchase lab-grown meat, but 'if we pass this bill, we're going to be hypocrites.'
'This is the government telling consumers who can and cannot purchase this product, and picking winners and losers,' Bogue said.
Lab-grown meat, also called cell-cultured or cultivated meat, starts from a sample of animal cells that are fed the sugars, water, proteins and vitamins needed to grow into muscle and fat.
Erin Rees Clayton is a Pierre-based scientific adviser for the Good Food Institute, a group that works to advance innovation in alternative proteins. She told the committee during a previous hearing that 'cultivated meat is meat at the cellular level.'
'It's just produced in a different way,' she said.
Federal regulators approved the sale of lab-grown meat in 2023, but the product is not yet widely available.
Some legislative committee members and others who testified Tuesday expressed skepticism or disagreement with federal approval of the product. Others said it's not the state's role to second-guess the decisions of federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The bill banning lab-grown meat would apply to the product's manufacture, sale and distribution in the state. Republican Rep. John Sjaarda, a farmer from Valley Springs, proposed the legislation.
Some other states, including Florida and Alabama, have banned lab-grown meat, and the Florida ban has sparked litigation from the industry. Nebraska is considering a ban.
The other bill advanced Tuesday in South Dakota would prohibit the use of state money for research, production, promotion, sale and distribution of lab-grown meat, with an exception for public universities.
South Dakota Searchlight asked Hunt, the main sponsor of that bill, what she's targeting. She gave an example of the state potentially providing an economic development grant to a company interested in lab-grown meat production, and said she wants to forbid that kind of state support for the industry.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX