AUSTIN (KXAN) – If you’re hoping to eat a meatball, made of wooly mammoth, grown in a lab you’re going to have to leave Texas.
A new law passed this legislative session has made it illegal to sell “cell culture protein for human consumption within” Texas. The bill, Senate Bill 261, will go into effect Sept. 1, 2025 and will expire in 2027.
The law makes Texas the seventh state to ban the sale of lab-grown or cultured meat. Indiana passed a similar law in May. Nebraska, Montana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida also have bans in effect.
“The lab-grown meat sector will continue to face headwinds as consumers and lawmakers learn more about the the lack of long-term health studies and use of ‘immortalized cells’” said Jack Hubbard, executive director of the Center for the Environment and Welfare (CEW), in a press release. CEW is a thinktank and one of the leading critics of lab-grown meat.
The bill was authored by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, and sponsored by Rep. Stan Gerdes, R-Texas, in the House.
Lab-grown meat is part of a larger trend in the meat industry towards sustainable meat products that don’t contribute to climate change. According to the United Nations, 14.5% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are created by livestock farming.
Multiple companies have sprung up in recent years focused on lab-grown meat, including Upside Foods, Vow Foods and Eat Just. The companies make a variety of meat products ranging from egg to quail.
BioBQ, based in Austin, aims to be the first company in the world to make lab-grown beef brisket.
Lab-grown meat is made by placing protein cells in a vat where they reproduce.
“They’re flooding around, they’re growing, we harvest them, and we have the cell mass, that we can then turn into a range of different products,” said CEO and Co-Founder of Vow Food, George Peppou to KXAN in 2023.
Right now, cultured or lab grown meat is only legal in Singapore and parts of the United States. Israel and the Netherlands have relaxed some restrictions on the product.