Food Fight: Can State Bans on Cultivated Meat Survive Federal Preemption?
By Anthony Corradi

            Modern industrial agriculture’s negative impacts on animal welfare, public health, and the environment are some of the rare social issues that boast broad support across political and demographic divides.[1] In a March 2023 survey, 81% of Americans reported they were concerned with the effect of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (“CAFOs,” or “factory farms”) on public health.[2] Similarly, 79% and 76% of Americans, respectively, expressed concerns about factory farms’ consequences for animal welfare and the environment.[3] These concerns ran so deep that 74% of Americans—including 83% of those who raised animals themselves—supported a ban on new factory farms.[4] Because an estimated 99% of all US farmed land animals are currently being raised in factory farms, these numbers suggest that hundreds of millions of Americans might welcome an alternative source of meat.[5]

In theory, cultivated meat (also known as cultured meat, clean meat, and cell-based meat)[6] seems uniquely capable of serving this nascent market. Unlike current imitation products like those from Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, cultivated meat is identical to conventional meat at the cellular level.[7] Though conceptualized as long ago as the 1800’s, the recent discovery and isolation of stem cells first made cultivated meat possible.[8] Producing cultivated meat requires multiplying stem cells from a living animal in-vitro, differentiating those stem cells into either muscle or fat cells, then using tissue engineering techniques to assemble the muscle and fat cells into a tissue closely resembling conventional meat.[9] Though technological barriers remain before cultivated meat is competitive with the cost of conventional meat, significant public and private investments have substantially lowered prices thus far.[10]

In 2019, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) formalized the current regulatory structure governing most cultivated meat production. FDA regulates the cell development stage; then authority passes to FSIS beginning with the food processing stage.[11] Two companies, GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods, were the first to receive both a premarket consultation clearance from FDA and a grant of inspection from FSIS.[12] Following this approval, both companies brought their products to the market—albeit in a very limited capacity—in July 2023.[13]

Despite federal regulatory approval and potential to mimic conventional meat without the need for deeply unpopular factory farming, cultivated meat has since faced a new hurdle: statewide bans. Currently, five states (Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Montana, and Nebraska) have passed permanent bans on cultivated meat, while two more (Texas and Indiana) enacted two-year bans.[14] The specific conduct barred by these laws varies slightly, but, generally, they prohibit some combination of manufacturing, importing, distributing, or selling any cultivated meat product within the state.[15]

A promising legal challenge to cultivated meat bans stems from the federal preemption doctrine. Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution states that “the Laws of the United States . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Express preemption is the most straightforward conflict between state and federal law, occurring when Congress expressly declares its intent to preempt state law.[16] With respect to cultured poultry, FSIS states that cell-cultured poultry food products are poultry food products as defined in 9 C.F.R. 381.1(b) (the Poultry Products Inspection Regulations), and “are, therefore, subject to the same statutory requirements, regulations, and FSIS oversight authority as . . . poultry food products derived from slaughter.[17] The Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) expressly preempts state law by proclaiming that no state may impose requirements with respect to “premises, facilities, operations . . . or ingredients . . .  in addition to, or different than, those made under this chapter.”[18] Thus, in an express preemption challenge, the question courts will have to answer is whether these state bans are imposing additional or different requirements on “premises, facilities, operations, . . . or ingredients.” For example, Florida’s law bans any “meat or food product produced from cultured animal cells.”[19] But since FSIS and the PPIA treat cultivated poultry and conventional poultry equivalently, Florida’s law—by distinguishing between methods of production—is arguably an impermissible regulation on poultry operations or ingredients. Although state bans vary and each will require a slightly different analysis, express preemption challenges seem broadly promising.

Alternatively, the Supreme Court has also recognized implied preemption, where congressional intent to preempt state law is implicit in a law’s structure and purpose. Implied preemption can take multiple forms, but, of relevance here, “obstacle preemption” arises when a state law “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.”[20] As to the PPIA’s purpose, Congress declared that consolidating the nationwide regulation of poultry products under the Secretary of Agriculture was appropriate “to prevent and eliminate burdens upon [interstate] commerce, to effectively regulate such commerce, and to protect the health and welfare of consumers.”[21] By banning a product that federal regulations treat as indistinguishable from a non-banned product, these state laws directly frustrate Congress’s stated objectives of effectively regulating and reducing the burden on interstate commerce.

To be sure, cultivated meat is not a guaranteed success even without these bans. The technology might prove too difficult to scale. The cost may never be competitive with conventional meat. Consumers may reject it despite widespread concerns with factory farming. But courts should not allow states to protect their entrenched industries or score political points by removing a federally regulated product’s access to the national market.

[1] 2023 Industrial Animal Agriculture Opinion Survey, Am. Soc’y for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 2–4 (2024), https://www.aspca.org/sites/default/files/2023_industrial_ag_survey_results_report_052523_1.pdf.

[2] Id. at 2.

[3] Id.

[4] Id. at 3.

[5] Jacy Reese Anthis, US Factory Farming Estimates, Sentience Inst., https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates (last updated Nov. 2, 2024).

[6] Mark J. Post et al., The Status of Cultured Meat and Scientific Challenges, New Harvest OpenCellAg Repository, 5 (2020), https://zenodo.org/records/7682919/files/Post_2020Challenges_Postprint.pdf.

[7] Id. at 3.

[8] Id.

[9] Id. at 3–4.

[10] Lisa S. Benson & Joel L. Greene, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R47697, Cell-Cultivated Meat: An Overview 1, 4–6 (2023).

[11] Id. at 8–10.

[12] Id. at 10–11.

[13] Id. at 11.

[14] Madyson Fitzgerald, Texas Becomes Seventh State to Ban Lab-Grown Meat, Stateline (June 30, 2025), https://stateline.org/2025/06/30/texas-becomes-seventh-state-to-ban-lab-grown-meat/.

[15] Compare Fla. Stat. § 500.452 (2024) (banning the manufacturing, sale, offering for sale, or distributing of cultivated meat), with Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 431.02105 (West 2025) (prohibiting the offering for sale or sale of cultivated meat).

[16] Bryan L. Adkins et al., Cong. Rsch. Serv., R45825, Federal Preemption: A Legal Primer 2 (2023).

[17] U.S. Dep’t of Agric., FSIS Directive 7800.1, FSIS Responsibilities in Establishments Producing Cell-Cultured Meat & Poultry Food Products 2 (June 21, 2023).

[18] 21 U.S.C. § 467e (2018); see also Federal Meat Inspection Act, 21 U.S.C. § 602 (2018) (declaring the same purposes for federal regulatory control over non-poultry meat).

[19] Fla. Stat. §§ 500.03, 500.452 (2024).

[20] Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67 (1941).

[21] 21 U.S.C. § 451 (2018).