Tangle - Florida bans lab-grown meat.

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat. On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill that bans lab-grown meat in the state, describing the bill as an effort to "save our beef" and protect cattle ranchers. The bill, S.B. 1084, made it unlawful to "manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat." You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can watch our latest video, Isaac's interview with former Congressman Ken Buck (CO-04) ⁠here⁠.Check the next episode of our new podcast series, The Undecideds. In episode 2, our undecided voters primarily talk about Trump’s legal troubles. How do they feel about his alleged crimes? How would him being convicted - or exonerated - change the way they vote? What about his claims he should have immunity as president? You’ll hear how they consider these major themes of the race, and also what they made of Haley dropping out and Biden’s State of the Union Address. You can listen to Episode 2 ⁠⁠here.⁠⁠Today’s clickables: A couple of notes (0:49), Quick hits (2:25), Today’s story (4:41), Left’s take (6:58), Right’s take (10:54), Isaac’s take (14:31), Listener question (19:32), Under the Radar (21:50), Numbers (22:26), Have a nice day (23:44)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of lab-grown meat? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Florida's ban on lab-grown meat. Yes, this is a thing. This is a real story happening. We're going to break it down, what's behind the ban, what the legislation actually says, some opinions from the left and the right, and then then as always, my take. We are going to push forward also with this format we've been doing where John and I pass things off back and forth a little bit to each other. I think generally just the trend of what we're trying to do is just bring more voices onto the podcast. So Ari and I have our Sunday show, which if you are not listening to, I recommend you do.

Yesterday's episode is up live now on our page. We've got this limited series, The Undecideds, and now we're introducing some new voices on the podcast. And we just want to experiment, do some new stuff, bring some fresh things to the table that make all of this a little bit more interesting. And the podcast space is super fun. So I think you're just gonna see us bringing on more people, more guests, trying new things pretty constantly and just doing it all in the Tangle ethos and trying to bring something fresh to you.

On that note, I do wanna give you a heads up about something that is not on the podcast, which is my Friday edition about the protests that are happening right now. If you are on our mailing list, you receive that edition. We send it to everybody. If you are not, I encourage you to go to readtangle.com and read the article titled, Protesters Aren't Always Right. We are not producing a podcast for that article, but it got a huge response and I wanted to plug it here just

in case there are some podcast listeners out there not keeping up with the newsletter or the website. All right, with that out of the way, I'm going to pass it off to John to explain today's main topic, and you'll hear from me in a few minutes. Thank you, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are today's quick hits. First up, Representative Henry Cuellar, the Democrat from Texas, and his wife were indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges. The Justice Department alleged the couple accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes. Number two, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet voted unanimously to ban the Qatari-owned news outlet Al Jazeera, then raided its offices. Meanwhile, Hamas officials claimed responsibility for several rocket attacks at the Gaza-Israel border, and Israel warned residents of Rafah to evacuate because of a pending invasion.

Number three, Hope Hicks became the first member of former President Trump's inner circle to take the stand in his New York trial, testifying that he instructed her to deny the allegations he had a sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels. Separately, the judge in the case fined Trump for his 10th violation of a gag order and threatened jail time for future violations. Number four, the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in April, and unemployment ticked up from 3.8% to 3.9%. And number five, Canada arrested three Indian nationals in connection with the 2023 murder of a Sikh separatist leader. Now, this may look like your average chicken filet, but it's actually cell cultivated meat, an emerging technique where meat is developed in a male container just like this from a sample of animal cells and does not require killing animals. Proponents of the method say it's an ethical and sustainable protein option for generations to come. They also argue there are geopolitical incentives to invest in the technology as the U.S.'s main competition

in this space right now is China, which is ramping up efforts to improve their cultivated meat industry. But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is saying he's against lab-grown meat and Florida should be as well. You will not be seeing any lab-grown meat on grills in Florida. Governor DeSantis made that official today, signing a bill that bans the manufacture and sale of cultivated meats. On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans lab-grown meat in the state, describing the bill as an effort to save our beef and protect cattle ranchers. The bill, SB 1084, made it unlawful to manufacture for sale, sell, hold, or offer for sale or distribute cultivated meat. Cultivated

meat does not include plant-based meat substitutes but refers only to meat that is grown from animal stem cells. The science behind the process has existed for over a century but wasn't proposed as a way to grow meat until 2013. Florida is the first state to outlaw the manufacture and distribution of lab grown meat, but states like Alabama, Arizona, and Tennessee are also exploring similar legislation. Florida ranks ninth for beef cattle production in the U.S., with sales of beef cattle and breeding stock generating a $900 million economic impact annually, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Today, Florida is 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, DeSantis said in a press release. Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef. Good Meat, a company that produces cultivated meat, criticized the decision in a post on X. In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can and cannot purchase, Good Meat said. Lab-grown meat is still expected to be years away from commercial viability, but startups have raised millions of dollars pursuing technology to scale it up. The mission of these companies is to create a less carbon-intensive and more

animal-friendly alternative to traditional domesticated livestock. One study from the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment estimated that cultivated meat could reduce beef production land use by 90% and the carbon footprint of beef production by 92%. Today, we're going to explore some arguments about Florida's new law from the left and the right, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, let's start with a bit of agreement. Many on the right and the left argue that the bill flies in the face of free market capitalist principles. Writers on both sides criticize the ban as a glaring example of government overreach.

All right, let's go to what the left is saying. The left is critical of the law, suggesting it politicizes an issue that doesn't yet exist. Some say the bill is the latest example of bad policy driven by the culture war. Others say it's a ploy to protect wealthy agricultural interests. In the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell wrote, the GOP is freaking out about an industry that doesn't even exist yet. Animal welfare activists have advocated more humane treatment of animals for generations, and traditionally produced meat is responsible for huge quantities of greenhouse gas emissions each year, the consequence of feed production,

manure management, and yes, lots of cow belching, Rampel said. Then there are people like, well, me. I usually don't think much about where my food comes from or what its greenhouse gas footprint is, but this is likely true for most consumers. We buy our food primarily based on crass criteria such as price and taste, rather than abstract principles such as saving the earth. That's exactly what makes this nascent industry so exciting. Perhaps humanity doesn't have to rely on moral suasion to save the planet and protect helpless critters. Financial incentives alone could do it. This novel technology might eventually create meats that appeal to amoral businesses and lazy consumers, Rampel wrote.

This is not about a left-wing nanny state forcing the sale or consumption of lab-grown meats. It's about a conservative nanny state prohibiting the voluntary consumption and sale of these products, which again, mostly don't exist yet. What happened to the Republicans who wanted the free market to choose winners and losers? In Bloomberg, Tyler Cowen said these bans are red meat for the conservative base. The case for and against these laws isn't primarily economic, though DeSantis did speak of the importance of agriculture, and the Florida Cattlemen's Association has lobbied for the bill, Cowen wrote. Instead, let me offer another theory. The anti-lab-grown meat movement is about conservative cultural insecurity,

the fear that, without the force of law, some conservative cultural norms will fade away. This is the real fear, not of lab-grown meat itself, but of the changing culture its popularity would represent. Whether conservatives find the meat substitute to be adequate is beside the point. Society would have to decide that some of the most cherished beliefs can be disposed of. Both humankind's dominion over nature, which runs strong in the Christian strand of conservative thought, and masculinized meat-eating culture, more specifically the meat-grilling culture, would be under threat. In Vox, Kenny Torella argued, the ban is about protecting big ag. On the surface, Bill's aiming to ban cell-cultivated meat could be waved away as mere political theater, a ratcheting up of the culture war by attacking alternatives to factory-farmed meat as a cheap way to own the libs during an election year. But there's something

more troubling at play here. The proposed bans are part of a long-time strategy by the politically powerful agribusiness lobby and its allies in Congress and state houses to further entrench factory farming as America's dominant source of protein. The cell-cultivated meat bands and the plant-based labeling restrictions represent one side of agribusiness's policy coin, proactive measures to weaken upstarts that could one day threaten its bottom line.

The other side of that coin is sweeping deregulation that has made meat abundant and cheap, but at a terrible cost to the environment, workers, and animals, Torello wrote. The sad irony of all this chest-thumping over meat alternatives is that farmers do face many real threats, like a changing climate that makes harvests less predictable and corporate consolidation that has put the majority of America's meat supply in the hands of a few massive companies. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right mostly opposes the ban on principle, arguing it doesn't align with conservative ideals. Some say the law is an affront to free market capitalism. Others support the ban as a protective measure for farmers.

In the dispatch, Nick Catozio called DeSantis a meathead. If you want to make a living peddling meat in Florida, you had better be hacking off pieces of cow, pig, or chicken, which makes this not just a grim week for libertarians in the GOP, but an unusually grim one for animals as well, Cotogio said. Every conservative will have the same intuition about Florida's dumb law. If there are people willing to try lab-grown meat, and there assuredly are, and there are people willing to sell it to them, by what right does the government interfere in that transaction? The only good answer I can think of would involve safety concerns with the product, but there aren't any.

Even if there were, those concerns might plausibly be addressed by regulating production rather than criminalizing it. Nor is DeSantis seriously arguing that lab-grown meat poses a grave public health risk. How could he, when just two companies have received FDA approval to produce the stuff thus far, and neither one has stock available to purchase anywhere in the U.S.? Florida's law is the solution in search of a problem, as bad legislation often is. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond

Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In red state, Ward-Clark said the bill is the wrong move.

It's hard to see a reason for this law. Is there some health reason? Is there any evidence that lab-grown meat is dangerous? I'm not saying I'd eat it. I wouldn't touch it myself, but there are lots of things I wouldn't do. But is there some compelling reason for the government of the state of Florida to restrict their residents' choices on this matter? Clark asked. One of the reasons given was protecting Florida agriculture. That's an argument that appeals to a lot of people.

There's no doubt about it. But in any other matter, with any other product, conservatives and libertarians alike would bridle at the idea of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians are supposed to be the pro-liberty party, aren't they? Aren't we? Isn't a primary argument for minimal, strictly limited government supposed to be trusting the citizenry to make their own choices in where to live, what to own, how to work, and what they eat, Clark said.

Markets are complicated. They're often messy. But if the government stays out of the way, markets usually get things right in the end. Florida and Ron DeSantis need to be reminded of this. In the Washington Examiner, Jeremiah Poff wrote, Florida is right to ban lab-grown meat. The Sunshine State's policy is actually protecting an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people from destruction. While not yet a widely available commercial product, lab-grown meat, which is grown from existing animal cells, is widely seen as the future of food production, Poff said. The push for lab-grown meat is also seen as a project of the global elite, embodied by

the World Economic Forum, which has advanced various ideas to change drastically the kind of food that people consume. Banning lab-grown meat is a good policy because it protects the farming industry from a technological advancement that threatens its very existence and, with it, the livelihoods of entire communities. People settle down in places where they are able to provide for their families, places that offer good-paying jobs with a stable industry that ensures the community has lasting roots that can endure across generations, Poff wrote. By banning the sale of lab-grown meat in the Sunshine State, DeSantis is ensuring that the communities relying on the farming industry to survive will endure for generations. And now we'll send it over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So first of all, I was really glad to see so much bipartisan

hand-wringing about this bill because I think it is a very good example of very bad government. The government should not be banning an industry that, as far as we know, poses no real public health threat. It's not just a policy prescription that violates conservative and free market principles. It's also just a dumb way to address a nascent industry. If Florida rejects these companies, they'll go to states or foreign countries that are open for business, create competition and jobs, and give consumers more options for the kind of food they want to eat. If this industry is the threat that DeSantis thinks it is, and I don't think it is, but I'll explain why in a second, then he's just assured

that his entire state will not get to compete in an industry so brilliant and so profitable that it could take over an entire sector of the food market. But like I said, I am very skeptical that lab-grown meat is that industry. Jeremiah Poth claimed in his piece that it is widely seen as the future of food production, which made me wonder, that it is widely seen as the future of food production, which made me wonder, according to whom? This is an industry in its infancy that still has a lot of questions to answer. It has a lot of hurdles to clear. The tech will need to produce a more consistent product, the industry has to function at scale, and the process has to become efficient enough to fulfill the promise of being sustainable. But I don't think any of those are the industry's

largest problem. If enough money and smart people are behind these startups, I'm sure they will figure those things out. Rather, my gut instinct is that eating meat grown in a lab is just going to weird a lot of people out, and that branding it and bringing it to market is going to be really hard. Not only will these companies have to make the texture and the taste perfect, they're going to have to get over the dystopian futuristic feel of the entire concept. I'm a person who eats a lot of meat, has zero food allergies, and will try any food once, yet something about this entire idea just makes me feel squeamish. I know that's a straw bowl with a sample size of one, but I imagine that I'm like a lot of other people. I'm not sure I've written about this in town before, but

I've also long held the belief that society is ready to snap back to a less technologically centered age. Parents are already fighting screen time and remote learning, and I think that's just the start. There's a good chance that artificial intelligence actually helps to accelerate a massive cultural pushback on robots doing human jobs and all the new tech that will come with it. In that context, meat grown in a petri dish feels ripe for rejection. I'm also skeptical that cultivated meat will be the innovation to turn the entire livestock industry on its head or save us from global warming. More likely to me is that it serves as a minor disruption akin to the plant-based meat

industry. Long term, I believe that the push for more humane animal treatment and concerns about climate change will probably translate into smaller scale farming. We've already seen some people buying portions of a cow or subscribing to community-supported agriculture or just eating way less meat. All of which, for what it's worth, would be good. The mass-scale meat farming industry does create a ton of animal welfare and environmental issues. Without even getting into the carbon intensity argument, large-scale ranching can require mass deforestation or cause grassland destruction and water shortages, and I don't

know how it's sustainable with a growing population. My initial instinct was one a lot of the writers on the left also seem to have. Why is DeSantis banning a nascent industry that doesn't even sell cultivated meat at scale yet? Which makes sense. What is the point of fighting an industry that is in its infancy? But I suppose if you're in DeSantis' shoes and feel like this industry is a genuine threat, the timing of this bill does make sense. In that scenario, there's no reason to wait for the industry to take off and then try to fight it. And yet, the reality is that DeSantis is banning an industry that doesn't even exist for the sake of a threat that, best I can tell, is not real, either in the present or in the future.

And make no mistake, this is not DeSantis fighting back for the upstart cattle rancher being squeezed by big business and evolving consumer demands. This is big ag throwing its weight around like any other major lobbying group. Farmers all across the country are facing hard times, yes, but it's got nothing to do with little-known startups trying to grow steak in a lab. Hopefully, bans like these don't become a sweeping response from states across the country. Instead, investors and consumers should get to see what lab-grown meat is really made of, then decide for ourselves. We'll be right back after this quick break all right that is it for my take which brings us to your questions answered this one is from steve in southport florida steve said i'm a relatively new subscriber i've been

impressed with the level of civility displayed in the comments. I saw very few instances of comments being removed prior to one I deleted. Having seen the notation that a comment had been removed afterwards, I'm wondering if you ever remove comments. Okay, so first of all, I'm glad you think the comments on our articles are civil. I actually quite agree. And it's rewarding to see people argue and disagree with each other with only a small amount of internet-fueled scoring. The community of our most engaged readership is something I am immensely grateful for, and I think it also serves as a testament to the ability of our content to open the door for civil engagement. Right now, my personal policy is to never remove a comment. That's also been pretty easy because I've never

felt like I should or had to. If you see a comment that was removed, though, it actually means that someone deleted it themselves. The way the process works is that someone will flag a comment as offensive or inappropriate. I'll get a notification of that in my email, I believe the commenter does too, and then I'll review the comment to see what the complaint is about. Typically, though, there are Tangle readers already responding to the offending comment and asking someone to offer something more productive, so the community is good at enforcing its own standards. I've also never had to ban a person for continuing to violate our standards of decency, and I hope I never have to. There have been a few people whose comments have been repeatedly flagged, and only once have I ever emailed someone and asked them to be more conscious

about the way they were engaging with the community. Generally, though, my policy is to let comments live and let people interact, and I think that would change only if I saw a repeat offender being egregiously offensive or counterproductive in the comments on purpose. But, like you said, instances of offensive comments that require me to step in are rare, which is unbelievably special. And if you ever want to join this discussion, please feel free to comment on any one of our newsletters available in our archives. All right, that is it for my take on today's reader question, so I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll be back here tomorrow. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today.

New York City officials said that nearly half of the 282 people arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia and City College campuses were not students. 29% of the 112 people arrested at a protest on Columbia's campus were not affiliated with the school, and 60% of the 170 arrested at City College were not. The New York City Police Department and Mayor Eric Adams released arrest details on Thursday. NPR has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The amount invested in cultivated meat and seafood companies in 2023 is $225.9 million, a 308% year-over-year decrease according to the Good Food Institute. The number of cultivated meat and seafood facilities opened or announced in 2023 was 17. The percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions attributed to all livestock systems, with cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens in 2015 was 12%.

The percent of global livestock emissions attributed to cattle is 60%. That's according to a 2023 United Nations report. The approximate number of beef cows in Florida as of January 2024 is 862,000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The estimated production cost per pound of cultivated meat is $17, according to a 2021 study in the Journal of Biotechnology and Bioengineering. The amount contributed to Ron DeSantis by the Florida Cow Pack since 2017 is $75,000. The amount contributed to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee by the Florida Cow Pack since 2017 is $72,000. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story.

Detective Michael Harton, a police officer in New Haven, Connecticut, was on duty at a movie theater on March 4th, 2019, when Nikki Huckabee ran out of the theater with her baby. The baby had stopped breathing, and Huckabee said she was so scared she couldn't remember how to perform CPR. Luckily, she found Detective Harton, a trained EMT who was able to save the baby's life. Now, Harton, who has since agreed to be the baby's godfather, and Huckabee are like family. Everybody's lives changed for the better that night. Especially mine, Detective Harton said. Fox News has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. episode description. All right, everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always,

if you'd like to support our work, please head over to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. We'll be right back here tomorrow. Until then, from Isaac and the rest of the crew, have a good one, everybody. Peace. so our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, We'll be right back. web is family's buried history and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.