Florida sued over its ban on lab-grown meat

Upside Foods, a cultivated meat firm, sued Florida over its ban on lab-grown meat, arguing that the state’s legislation prohibiting the sale of cultivated meat is unconstitutional. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the ban into law in May, describing the legislation as a way of “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.”

In a lawsuit filed in federal court on Monday, Upside Foods and the Institute of Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, allege that Florida’s lab-grown meat ban is about protecting the state’s cattle industry — and that the law is unconstitutional. The complaint claims SB 1084 violates the Supremacy and Commerce clauses of the Constitution, as well as two federal laws regulating the inspection and distribution of meat and poultry products. 

“Our Constitution gives Congress the power to create and enforce a national common market so people can make decisions for themselves about what products they want to buy in the interstate market,” Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, said during a Tuesday press conference. “The states simply do not have the power to wall themselves off from products that have been approved by the USDA and the FDA.”

Alternatives to conventional meat products, including plant-based and cultivated meat, have become a wedge issue in the culture war between liberals and conservatives. As a result, companies that offer alternatives to animal-based products have found themselves targeted by state-level laws that curtail or outright prohibit them from selling their products.

Upside and the Institute for Justice argue that Florida’s ban on cultivated meat is intended to protect the state’s cattle industry from out-of-state competition. The ban therefore violates the “dormant aspect” of the Commerce Clause, which prohibits state protectionism, Upside alleges. The complaint notes that during the signing event, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was flanked by cattle ranchers and “spoke in front of a podium that featured a sign stating, ‘SAVE OUR BEEF.’”

Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson — who is named as a defendant — called the lawsuit “ridiculous.”

“Lab-grown ‘meat’ is not proven to be safe enough for consumers and it is being pushed by a liberal agenda to shut down farms. Food security is a matter of national security, and our farmers are the first line of defense,” Simpson said in a statement. “States are the laboratory of democracy, and Florida has the right to not be a corporate guinea pig. Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.”

But Upside’s complaint alleges that Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat is about protectionism, not food safety, and points to DeSantis’ press conference announcing the ban as proof.

The Food and Drug Administration said Upside’s products were safe to eat in 2022, and the US Department of Agriculture approved the sale of products from Upside and a competitor, Good Meat, the following year.

Upside argues that Florida’s ban harms the firm’s operations elsewhere in the country, too. Florida’s ban on cultivated meat — the first in the nation — inspired copycat legislation across the country. Alabama banned lab-grown meat in May, though that legislation won’t go into effect until October. Legislators in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have introduced similar bans. In the complaint, Upside and the Institute of Justice claim that the “growing patchwork of conflicting state laws governing cultivated meat” makes it more difficult for Upside to partner with national meat distributors, “who generally will not carry products they cannot lawfully sell in every state.” 

Upside had begun a partnership with a Miami-based chef before Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat went into effect on July 1st, according to the complaint, which was filed in the Northern District of Florida. That chef, who is not named in the complaint, had begun making plans with Upside to host a tasting event at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami on February 20th, 2025. Upside also planned on distributing its products at Art Basel Miami in early December of this year and had “identified other chefs in Miami and Tallahassee” that were interested in distributing its product, according to the complaint. Florida’s ban now precludes these events from happening, since Upside’s participation could lead to criminal penalties for itself and its potential business partners, the complaint claims.

Upside is asking the court to declare Florida’s cultivated meat ban unconstitutional and to issue preliminary and permanent injunctions against the law. During the press conference, Sherman, the IJ attorney, said Upside would like the injunction to go into effect before Art Basel.

“If consumers don’t like the idea of cultivated meat, there’s a simple solution,” Sherman said. “They don’t have to eat it. But they can’t make that decision for other consumers.”