“This ban is a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers, and consumers,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement following the bill’s passage. “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.”
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Texas joins Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska in enacting new laws this year; Alabama and Florida did so last year. In March, the Oklahoma House approved a similar bill that did not advance out of the Senate this session.
The barrier here is that hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution has extremely optimized their form, and the nature of growing only the muscle cells de-optimizes the system. Animals have immune systems; lab cells have to be kept in a sterile environment, a significant cost. Animals have digestive systems and can power cell growth and all other functions from common plant materials; lab cells have to be fed pre-digested and carefully proportioned material, a significant cost. Animals have circulatory systems that efficiently perfuse oxygen and nutrients, and remove waste; lab cell containers have to be centrifuged in small containers because the forces required in large containers damage the cells. And so on.
Lab-grown cuts are sold as a luxury good now, and I expect as the price comes down from 1000x animal-grown meat to more like 10x animal-grown meat they will become more widely eaten by rich conspicuous consumers.
The real opportunity for equal-tasting, cheaper, better for the environment “meat” is development of and efficiencies gained by scaling the lines of plant-based imitations like what Impossible and it’s competitors are doing.
I’ve had impossible burger and while they’re OK tasting they’re not equal tasting. Further, after eating one I felt very strange, like my body had some sort of reaction to it.
To your point, the value I see is if this process can be used to duplicate exotic meats, that could protect some species from over-harvesting and poaching. Of course, that supposes a circumstance where the environment that produces the natural specimen is not a fundamental requirement to make the meat desirable.