DeSantis Signs Bill Prohibiting Lab-Grown Meat In Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill that prohibits the sale of lab-grown meat in the state.
The bill, S.B. 1084, makes it “unlawful” to “manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute” lab-grown meat anywhere in Florida.
DeSantis’ support for the legislation is part of his administration’s commitment to a “vibrant agriculture industry.” According to the governor, this bill does more to protect the industry than other bills he has signed in the past as it is focused on protecting the industry from “acts of man” based on an “ideological agenda” that blames climate change on ranchers.
“These will be people who will lecture the rest of us about things like global warming, they will say that you can’t drive a internal combustion engine vehicle, they’ll say that agriculture is bad, meanwhile, they’re flying to Davos and their private jets,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Thursday.
“This is really a vision of imposing restrictions on freedoms for everyday people while these elites are effectively pulling the strings, calling the shots, and doing whatever the hell they want to do in their own lives,” he added.
He then went on to slam the agenda of the WEF that has people eating bugs, saying, “They want to basically eliminate meat, they want to eliminate cattle, they want to eliminate chickens, and they want to create protein in laboratories. So it’s fake, essentially, lab-created meat, and their goal is to get to a point where you will not be raising cattle, where you will not be developing meat like we’ve been doing for hundreds and hundreds of years in the State of Florida.”
“That’s not really what they’re going for because they know if that was put out there to compete with with normal beef that they would lose. So what they want to do is put that out there and then say, ‘Well, wait a minute, you can do this in a lab. You don’t need to do cattle, you don’t need to do all this, so why don’t you just phase all that out? That’s ultimately the goal. Now they’re not at the point where they’re going to execute that today. But I think part of being good stewards of these industries, of the state, of the public well being, is to think of forward and head off threats before they even come,” he added.
DeSantis touted the legislation in a post on X, writing, “Global elites want to control our behavior and push a diet of petri dish meat and bugs on Americans. Florida is saying no. I was proud to sign SB 1084 to keep lab grown meat out of Florida and prioritize our farmers and ranchers over the agenda of elites and the World Economic Forum.”
Global elites want to control our behavior and push a diet of petri dish meat and bugs on Americans.
Florida is saying no. I was proud to sign SB 1084 to keep lab grown meat out of Florida and prioritize our farmers and ranchers over the agenda of elites and the World Economic… pic.twitter.com/vHdWaJtckU— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 1, 2024
The move against lab-grown meat in Florida did not please Good Meat, which describes itself as “the first company in the world to sell cultivated meat.”
Expressing disappointment over DeSantis’ signing of the legislation into law, an X account belonging to the company wrote, “In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can or cannot purchase.”
We’re not going anywhere. pic.twitter.com/8mOMnxuoQz
— GOOD Meat (@GOODMeat) May 1, 2024
