Mississippi house Representatives have just adopted a law prohibiting cultivated meat. This makes Mississippi a third state that forbade meat grown in vats from diminutive animal cell samples.
. Mississippi Bill Apply illegally illegal for each production, sale or distribution of arable meat in the state. A violation of the law would be an offense, a fine of a fine of no more than USD 500 and/or up to three months in prison. Similar provisions adopted last year in Florida and Alabama also include potential prison conditions or a fine of up to USD 500.
The act is now waiting for the signature of the Governor of Tate Reeves and becomes a law, unless he decides to veto the act. Andy Gipson, Mississippi commissioner, criticized the cultivated meat industry and supported the bill in 2019, which prevented arable meat products marked as meat in this state. In 2024, he published a post on his website, which praised cultivated meat bans in Florida and Alabama. “I want my steak to come from beef bred on farms, not Petri-Dish from the laboratory,” he said.
“This has a very, very, strong sense of political theater,” says Suzi Gerber, executive director of the Seafood, Miniature and Innovation Association, a commercial group representing a cultivated meat industry. He says that the actual impact of law in any of these states would be minimal, because the cultivating meat was not available for sale in any of them.
Republican representatives of Bill Pigott and Lester Carpenter introduced the Mississippi project in January 2025. Both houses passed without one vote in the opposition. But similar regulations in other states had a smaller path. AND Wyoming Bill This would be forbidden to be a cultivated meat as a third reading in the Senate in February, while a similar bill proposed in southern Dakota also did not pass through Senate voting in February
“I was surprised, but I encouraged the results in these states,” says Gerber. In Wyoming, some senators were in favor of better packaging and labels instead of a direct prohibition of cultivated meat, while in southern Dakota Some legislators objected The ban, arguing that he would inhibit free trade.
Other states consider provisions similar to that already adopted in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Invoiced Georgia in January Selling cultivated meat is not illegal. In NebraSka a bill that would forbidding cultivated meat The governor Jim Pillen was introduced in January.
The ban on Florida is currently questioned in a court case brought by the California cultivated meat company Upside Foods and the Institute of Justice, non -profit of the public office of public interest. The case claims that Ban in Florida violates two separate parts of the US Constitution, which includes inter -lane trade and the relationship between federal and state law. In October, the federal judge refused Request for the production of food products for a preliminary order This would stop the enforcement of Florida’s ban on meat growing.
Constant dripping of the prohibition coincided with the deterioration of the investor’s enthusiasm for cultivated meat. Only $ 226 million is Invested in arable meat startups In 2023, significantly from $ 922 million in 2022 at the beginning of 2024 In total, later in the same year.
But there are some signs that the industry believes these winds. On March 8, Mission Barns, based on San Francisco, announced that Food and Drug Administration did not have any further questions about the security of the cultivated product of pork, which is the main step towards selling the product in the USA. Only two other companies, Upside Foods and Eat Just, received a similar letter from the FDA. Now Mission Barns only needs the US Department of Agriculture to launch in the USA.