The North Carolina House of Representatives passed legislation on Tuesday requiring clear labeling of lab-grown meat, a growing industry in North Carolina with the largest cultivated meat production facility in the world setting up shop just one hour east of Raleigh.
Cell-cultivated meat is grown from animal cells in a lab. The cells are harvested once they are fully developed and then matched to the flavor and texture of authentic meat.
House Bill 134 passed with bipartisan support on Tuesday and would prohibit the misbranding of meat and poultry products by requiring clear labels on lab-grown meat. Specifically, if a company sells cell-cultured food products that use meat or poultry marketing terms to describe it, the packaging must clearly indicate its lab-grown origins with terms such as “cell-cultured,” “fake,” “grown in a lab,” or “lab-grown.”
The bill also requires that the clarifying term be close to the product name and in at least 20-point font or the size of the surrounding type, whichever is greater. The legislation passed in a 106-11 vote, with all Republicans supporting the bill. It now awaits action in the state Senate.
“This process is something between cloning and basically growing a tumor in my opinion,” Rep. Jeffrey McNeely, R-Iredell, said last week during a committee meeting. “Their line is ‘we only kill it once and grow the stem cells.’ Well, I got news for you: We only kill the animal once ourselves. We just do it quite a few times. I think we need to make sure that people realize what they are eating.”
McNeely said the labels need to be fairly large for older folks who cannot see as well and sometimes forget their glasses. However, Democrats opposed to the bill have repeatedly brought up the 20-point font as an issue.
On the House floor, Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover, debated the bill and said a 20-point font requirement suggests it might not be just an accuracy and labeling bill. She pointed to six and eight-point guidelines from the USDA and FDA.
“Everybody loves a North Carolina farmer, let’s say that first, but we cannot, and we must not try to stifle competition with this font, this labeling,” said Rep. Butler. “It stigmatizes the product. And I just think that this kind of technology has the potential to really reduce greenhouse emissions moving forward. It has the potential to really assist in the fight against worldwide hunger, and it’s not something that we should be afraid of, we should embrace. In fact, we know that Tyson industry, one of the biggest chicken-producing companies in the world, is investing in this technology.”
Tyson is an investor in Believer Meats, which is opening a brand-new 200,000-square-foot facility just east of the state capital in Wilson, North Carolina. The Israel-based company is hiring for multiple positions at its new facility, which is set to be the largest cultivated meat production center in the world, with the capacity to produce at least 10,000 metric tons of cultivated meat annually.
The company’s CEO met with North Carolina’s US Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis in 2023 ahead of its first US commercial production facility opening.
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