Let’s go back to talking about cultivated meat, a thorny question that in recent years has made it discuss a little around the world, including Italy. Our country, in fact, has already imposed strong restrictions on the production and sale of cultivated meat, officially for reasons of food safety and protection of traditional agriculture.
Now the boiling potato has arrived in Texas where Senate Bill 261 prohibits the production and sale of cultivated meat for two years. Entry into force on 1 September 2025, this law provides for administrative and criminal sanctions for those who violate the ban and prevents the opening of commercial activities dedicated to the meat created in the laboratory. According to the agriculture commissioner of Texas, Sid Miller, the measure protects the traditional zootechnical industry and consumers, protecting them from the so -called “synthetic meat”.
But companies are not there and the legal battle breaks out.
Two companies suck the state
Upside Foods, which produces cultivated chicken, and Wildype, specialized in cultivated salmon, reacted immediately presenting a federal cause against the state. Companies are represented by the Institute for Justice, a no-profit law firm that deals with defending the right of companies to operate freely on the market and the freedom of consumers.
According to lawyers, the Sente Bill 261 law would be unconstitutional, because its real objective is not to protect the health of consumers, already guaranteed by the authorizations of the FDA and the Department of Agriculture of the United States, but protect the traditional zootechnical industry from the competition of new technologies. Upside Foods and Wildtype claim that the ban limits the freedom of choice of consumers and hinders the possibility of innovative companies to operate freely on the market.
The legal dispute highlights a wider question: until what point can a state intervene to protect a traditional sector, at the expense of innovation and competition? Cultivated meat companies claim that Texas is trying to block citizens access to a product already approved as safe, transforming a market choice into a political-legal problem. The federal cause could therefore become an important precedent both for other American states and for countries that are evaluating similar restrictions.
Texas is not the only state of the USA to have introduced restrictions, Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska have also adopted prohibitions or similar regulations.
Freedom of choice of consumers
According to Justin Kolbeck, Wildtype’s co-founder, the ban limits the freedom of consumers:
We believe that Americans should have the freedom to choose what to eat. Even if you don’t like the idea of cultivated seafood, we hope you agree that we are slipping on a dangerous land if we leave such personal decisions to the government, how to put on the plate for us and for our families.
Before the entry into force of the law, in Texas there was only one restaurant that served cultivated meat, the Otoko luxury sushi bar in Austin, which proposed the salmon Wildype in the menu.
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