OPINION
America is poised to lead the world in food innovation – but several states are trying to stop it. In a misguided example of government interference in free markets, five U.S. states (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, and West Virginia) have introduced legislation to subject the sale of cultivated meat and seafood products to criminal prosecution.
Criminalizing this innovation endangers American national security in profound ways.
Cultivated meat — beef, chicken, pork, duck, and seafood grown from animal cells — is certainly the stuff of science fiction.
This technology must be safe for human consumption.
That's why the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration (USDA) scrutinized these products for the better part of a decade before approving two companies to sell cultivated chicken last year.
Advocates for these bans now say that they are trying to protect the ranchers and farmers bringing meat to American tables today from competition:
- We need to support America’s farmers and ranchers.
- Criminalizing innovation is the wrong way to do it.
We each became involved in alternative proteins motivated by working in national security.
Between us, we served at the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council, and have been stationed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
We've seen firsthand the instability emanating from countries lacking enough arable land and clean water to feed a growing population.
To address this crisis we need to place good bets on new technology.
Globally, nations — America’s allies and rivals alike — have recognized the link between food innovation and national security.
China has included cultivated meat in its most recent five-year agricultural plan.
In response to Florida’s proposed ban, Chinese officials are already declaring victory in the race to lead the food innovation arms race, announcing in a recent article that Florida’s interference in the free market combined with China’s "unwavering investment and policy support for cultured meat technology [has] enabled it to occupy a leading position in the global agricultural sector."
Israel, Japan, Singapore, and gulf countries (all of which significantly depend on imported food) have embraced cultivated meat and seafood as a way to safeguard their ability to feed their citizens.
After Israeli cultivated meat pioneer Aleph Farms received partial regulatory approval last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "the State of Israel is a trailblazer in this field, and for the food technology companies propelling it forward, their efforts demonstrate both great responsibility and tremendous courage."
Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida has a similar perspective, saying: "Foodtech, including cellular foods, is an important technology from the perspective of realizing a sustainable food supply."
Unlike chicken and beef production where the United States is the 2nd largest exporter globally, 70-85% of the US seafood supply is imported.
Far from protecting American jobs, banning cultivated seafood in the United States deepens our country’s dependence on foreign imports, largely from China.
Not only do these state bans boost China’s standing in the race to develop the food technology of tomorrow, but they are creating Chinese jobs at the expense of small American businesses like Wildtype.
These bans will stifle innovation in economically powerful states like Florida and Arizona as investment dollars are redirected to more business-friendly states.
A tragic example of this is Florida, which has a proud tradition of deep innovation epitomized by NASA. The field of cultivated meat and seafood began with a 2002 NASA-funded study exploring how to feed astronauts nutritious meat and seafood on long-term space missions.
Nearly two decades later, several companies successfully cultivated meat on the International Space Station. By banning the very technology initiated by one its most innovative institutions, the Sunshine State sends a clear message to innovators glboally that it's closed for business.
We are telegraphing to the world that the U.S. is willing to cede global leadership in developing future technology.
Proponents of these bills have argued that they should be banned because we can't know about product safety.
Nonsense.
In Wildtype’s safety submissions to FDA, we have shown that bacterial and heavy metal levels are as much as four orders of magnitude lower than conventional seafood.
Furthermore, we know that certain products on the market will kill you (cigarettes), but no state in the union is pushing legislation to ban the sale of these products.
For those concerned about new sources of animal protein displacing jobs, salmon farming was perceived as a similar threat when it became an established industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
Between 1988 and 1997, wild salmon catches worldwide actually increased by 27 percent.
Even if 20 companies in the cultivated meat and seafood industry each miraculously raised the $200 million-plus required to build an industrial-scale cultivated meat/seafood production facility and operated at maximum efficiency, the total cultivated meat/seafood output would be less 0.08% of global meat and seafood consumption.
Total funding in cultivated meat and seafood in 2023 was less than $200 million.
Individual liberty and free markets economy are central tenets of America.
Consumers should decide what products succeed or fail.
It’s up to companies like Wildtype to make products that are delicious, nutritious, and affordable enough to convince consumers to give us a try over their favorite wild-caught salmon.
This is no small feat.
The perils of governments meddling in free-markets fills history and economics books.
In Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev realized that the central government was not the most effective arbiter of consumer preferences. The Soviet Union's smothered competitiveness significantly contributed to a humiliating Soviet collapse, ultimately bringing us Vladimir Putin.
Legislators need to weigh the short-sighted political "benefits" these bans would bring, against the catastrophic consequences of stripping their citizens of freedom of choice, especially when it comes to feeding their families.
Matt Spence is a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Justin Kolbeck is co-founder & CEO of Wildtype, an American cultivated seafood producer, and a former U.S. State Department foreign service officer, where his postings included Afghanistan (Provincial Reconstruction Team, Paktika) and Peshawar, Pakistan.
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