Cultured Meat Maker Hosts Tasting Party Before Florida Ban
Shortly before Florida's ban on "lab-grown" meat went into effect on July 1, one manufacturer hosted a cultivated meat-tasting party in Miami.
California-based Upside Foods hosted guests on June 27 at a rooftop reception in the city's Wynwood neighborhood.
The US approved the sale of what's now being called "cell-cultivated" or "cell-cultured" meat for the first time in June 2023, allowing Upside Foods and another California company, Good Meat, to sell cultivated chicken.
Earlier this year, Florida and Alabama banned the sale of cultivated meat and seafood, which is grown from animal cells. Other states and federal lawmakers also are looking to restrict it, arguing the product could hurt farmers and pose a public safety risk.
Cultivated products are grown in steel tanks using cells from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a storage bank. The cells are fed with special mixtures of water, sugar, fats and vitamins. Once they've grown, they're formed into cutlets, nuggets and other shapes.
Cultivated chicken was prepared for the tasting event, which invited members of the South Florida public to get their first, and possibly last, taste of cultivated meat.
"The texture itself is a little bit different, but the taste was really, really good," reception guest Alexa Arteaga said. "Like way better than I was expecting."
Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti says that besides the ethical issue of killing animals, cultivated meat also avoids the health and environmental problems created by the meat industry, such as the destruction of forests, pollution and the spread of disease.
"We don't have any confined animals," Valeti said. "We just have healthy animal cells that are growing in cultivators."
Sean Edgett, Upside Foods chief legal officer, said federal approval of cultivated meat should supersede any state bans, which he believes are unconstitutional.
But the bans' supporters say they want to protect farmers and consumers from a product that has only been around for about a decade.
Valeti says he just wants to give people more options.
"We want to have multiple choices that feed us," Valeti said. "Some of those choices are conventional farming. Some of those choices are coming from plant-based foods. And cultivated meat is another solid choice."
