Mississippi House The representative has just passed a bill banning cultivated meat. This puts Mississippi in a third state that illegalizes flesh grown in the body from small samples of animal cells.
Mississippi Legislation It makes it illegal for anyone to manufacture, sell or distribute meat grown in the state. Violating the law is a misdemeanor and will be punished for up to three months in the county jail. Similar laws passed in Florida and Alabama last year also carry potential prisons or fines of up to $500.
The bill is currently waiting for Gov. Tate Reeves to sign and will become the law unless he chooses to reject the bill. Mississippi Agricultural Commissioner Andy Gipson criticized the cultivated meat industry and supported the 2019 bill that would prevent cultivated meat products from being labeled as state meat. In 2024, he published a post on his website, praising the ban on meat grown in Florida and Alabama. “The steaks would like to come from farm-farmed beef, not from petri dishes from the lab,” he writes.
“It has a very, very, very, very strong political theatre feeling,” says Susie Gerber, executive director of Meat, Poultry Association and Seafood Innovation, a product group representing the cultivated meat industry. She says the actual impact of the law in any of these states is minimal. Because none of the cultivated meat is sold in any of them.
Republican leaders Bill Piggott and Leicester Carpenter introduced the Mississippi bill in January 2025. It passed both homes without one vote against it. However, similar laws in other states did not have much smoother paths. a Wyoming Building That would have failed to do so while the cultivated meat was voted in the third reading in the Senate in February. Senate vote February.
“I was surprised, but I was encouraged by the outcomes of those states,” Gerber said. In Wyoming, some senators in South Dakota have argued for better packaging and labeling provisions, instead of banning cultivated meat entirely. Some lawmakers opposed The ban argues that it will hinder free trade.
Other states are considering similar laws to those already killed in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. The bill introduced in Georgia in January It is illegal to sell cultivated meat. Nebraska bill Cultivated meat is prohibited The state was introduced in January at the request of Gov. Jim Pillen.
The Florida ban is now being contested in a trial filed by the Judicial Institute, a California cultivation company, an upwardly food and non-profit public interest law firm. The lawsuit alleges that the Florida ban violates two separate parts of the U.S. Constitution, covering the relationship between interstate commerce and federal and state law. A federal judge was denied in October Requesting benefits of interim injunction It would have halted enforcement of the Florida ban on cultivated meat.
The steady IV drip of the state ban coincides with a recession in investor enthusiasm for cultivated meat. It was only $226 million Invested in a cultivated meat startup This marked a significant decrease in 2023 and 2022 from $922 million. In early 2024, workers fell while California-based Scififoods were closed. Later that year.
However, there are some indications that the industry is weathering these headwinds. On March 8, San Francisco-based cultivation company Mission Burns announced that the Food and Drug Administration has no further questions about the safety of grown pork fat products. Only the other two companies received similar letters from the FDA, just for eating upside down food. Currently, Mission Burn only requires approval from the US Department of Agriculture to launch in the US.
