States Try to Snuff Out Lab-Grown Meat Before It Really Starts

Lab-grown meat could be widely available in supermarkets across the U.S. in 10-15 years.

Advocates say the product offers consumers more choices, boosts food security for a country with growing demand and increases sustainability for a world with already stressed resources.

However, some states have already answered this question – with a hard “no.”

Seven states have banned the manufacturing, sale or distribution of lab-grown meat, and more have taken steps to restrict its labeling. Many of these steps happened in 2025, and the Department of Health and Human Services lists them on its website as examples of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s movement to “Make America Healthy Again.”

The latest ban in Texas started in September and lasts two years, though lawmakers can choose to extend it. Violators could face civil and criminal penalties.

“This ban is a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers and consumers,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement. “Texans have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”

But supporters of lab-grown meat are not going down without a fight. Lawsuits challenging bans have been filed in both Texas and Florida.

In its lawsuit against Texas, the Institute for Justice and cultivated food producers Wildtype and UPSIDE Foods argued the ban is “nothing more than unconstitutional economic protectionism.”

“This ban slams the door on choice, when all we’re asking is the freedom for Texans to decide for themselves,” Wildtype co-founder Aryé Elfenbein said in a statement.

State and federal action over the next several years could determine much about the future of the budding industry. And despite the pushback in recent months, some see reason for optimism about its future.

The Good Food Institute, a think tank working in “alternative protein innovation,” says that “cultivated meat is identical to conventional meat at the cellular level.”

Lab-grown meat comes from animal cells, so it’s not vegetarian like the “Impossible Burger” and similar products derived from plants.

Animal stem cells are placed in bioreactors and mixed with a blend of water, sugar, fats and vitamins to grow more cells and build the muscle and fat otherwise grown inside an animal. Growth factors and other proteins are typically added as well. The cells are then harvested and shaped into final products like a chicken fillet.

The product is completely safe, says David Kaplan, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University, and approvals from the Food and Drug Administration underscore that. The agency has approved five companies’ cultivated meat products, ranging from chicken to salmon to pork fat.

“All their data is publicly available through their filings, and there’s nothing in there that says it’s anything but at least as good, if not better, than what consumers eat today,” Kaplan says.

But consumers won’t be seeing it on the shelves anytime soon. David Block, a professor at the University of California, said it will be at least 10 to 15 years before lab-grown meat could be widely available in supermarkets.

The timeframe depends on everything going right for building a big manufacturing facility from scratch.

“I would argue that nobody has done this at a really large scale yet, so nobody knows exactly what they want to see in a very large-scale facility,” Block says.

Access to lab-grown meat thus far in the U.S. has been extremely limited, consisting of brief appearances in select restaurants like Bar Crenn in San Francisco and China Chilcano, in Washington, D.C.

But that hasn’t stopped states from banning the product.

Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska and Texas have passed bans (some of them temporary) on the manufacturing, sale or distribution of cell-cultured meat. Additional states have taken steps to regulate labeling of the product.

The related debate has been both heated and highly politicized.

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the ban in Florida, he described it as “fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.” He added that his administration “will save our beef.”

But the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association isn’t worried about competition.

Sigrid Johannes, the association’s senior director of government affairs, described the bans as state legislators “responding to their own constituents, it’s as simple as that” in a statement to U.S. News.

“Plenty of Americans from both sides of the aisle have serious concerns about yet another ultra-processed, artificial food landing on grocery store shelves, masquerading as whole-ingredient beef,” Johannes said. “NCBA has never pushed for a federal ban because we’re not afraid of competing with these products in the free market, but we will continue advocating for appropriate labeling rules so consumers know exactly what they’re eating.”

Though Kennedy and the Trump administration have cheered these states on, they haven’t proposed any similar federal action on the subject.

Of course, the nature of the product means the lab-grown meat industry faces more challenges than just government bans.

“There’s still issues, probably most notably the cost of those products,” says Block, who serves as director of the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein.

Production is expensive and has only been done in small quantities thus far. But Block says there is potential to bring the price down.

“If you were to produce these materials at really huge scale, then the cost would come down,” he says. “But that’s not really happening on any of these products yet.”

Whether the demand is there for such a scale-up is unknown, but there are some signs of interest. A 2024 survey from Purdue University found that 60% of consumers are willing to try cultivated beef, chicken and pig, with chicken garnering the most interest.

While most headlines will refer to the product as lab-grown meat, researchers prefer to call it cultivated meat.

“In terms of the way it would be perceived by consumers, if you say lab-grown, it has a very different connotation,” says Kaplan.

Experts say they are optimistic about the industry’s future, but they are worried about investing during the Trump administration.

“I’m very bullish about what we’ve gotten to and where things stand,” Kaplan says. “I’m just very uncertain on how quick the next step will be, and I’m very worried that we will be left behind by other countries because we’re not doing the investments.”