State Rep. Chris Miller has filed House Bill 5872, designated the Illinois Cultivated Meat Act. This intended legislation would ban production and sale of cultivated meat in Illinois. This initiative follows a similar law enacted in Florida and other under consideration in beef-producing states.
Rep. Miller stated, “We don’t need fake meat laboratories creating a highly expensive product that tries to replicate real meat.” While these sentiments are well supported by his constituency and have technical and financial validity the question of outright bans appears to be an overreach. At this time, no potential manufacturer has been able to produce cell-cultured meat in commercial quantities despite multi-millions of support from venture capital funds.
The most optimistic projections place the price of cultivated product far above animal-derived meat. It is acknowledged that environmental claims for cultivated meat are overstated but there does not appear to be a problem of safety. Notwithstanding the pros and cons of cultivated meat, the reality is that there is no immediate prospect of a product entering the market and that preemptive “feel good”, token bans are intended to placate constituents in farming communities rather than an attempt to serve producers, the food industry and consumers.