A federal appeals court has upheld Florida’s 2024 first-in-the-nation ban on cultivated or lab-grown meat.
“Because Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat does not regulate Upside’s ingredients, premises, facilities, or operations, federal law does not preempt SB 1084,” wrote Circuit Judge Andrew Basher on Monday in his 33-page ruling upholding Florida’s ban made by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
The ruling comes after California’s Upside Foods sued the state of Florida in August 2024, months after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the legislation (SB 1084) making it “unlawful for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in this state,” punishable by up to 60 days in jail. Food establishments that sold or served the product are also subject to penalties including loss of commercial licenses.
Upside Food was the first of two companies (the other being Good Meat) making cultivated meat in the United States that were approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for commercial sales nationwide in 2023.
Monday’s decision in the appeals court upholds a ruling by a federal judge in the Northern District of Florida in 2024 denial of Upside Foods’ request for a preliminary injunction to stop the ban. The Eleventh Circuit heard oral arguments in the appeal in November.
Upside argued in court that because the USDA had approved it to sell lab-grown meat, Florida’s ban amounted to a different or additional ingredient or facilities requirement that was preempted in the 1957 federal Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA).
The appeals court disagreed.
“Just like state bans on foie gras and horsemeat, Florida’s categorical ban on lab-grown chicken is not an ingredient regulation that is preempted by the PPIA,” Judge Brasher wrote.
Justice Kevin C. Newsom with the Eleventh Circuit Court and U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck of the Southern District of Florida, sitting by designation in the appeal, were the other two judges on the panel.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill into law in 2024.
The Phoenix reached out to Upside Foods but the company did not immediately respond for a request to comment.
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