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OMAHA — From the respite of his Callaway office, after a cold January day spent working cattle, Jim Jenkins wrangled with a question: Do you think much about meat products cultivated from cells?
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “Maybe I should.”
After researching, he made up his mind: He’d be very surprised if “lab meat” could compete on quality or price with Nebraska beef – like what comes from the Angus he raises – in the near future.
Just days earlier, Gov. Jim Pillen made it clear he did not want to wait to find out. Nebraska, he said, needed to “get on the offense.”
The governor, who founded one of the largest hog enterprises in the country, said the state needed to protect its farmers and ranchers, a critical piece of Nebraska’s economy and identity.
“Mostofuswantgovernmentoutofourhair, but there’s places where government needs to step in and protect us,” Pillen said at a mid-January press conference announcing a bill to ban the production and sale of “cultivated-protein food products.”
It’s unclear if a ban, which Pillen named a priority for the current legislative session, has enough support to become law. The senator behind the bill, Niobrara farmer and rancher Sen. Barry DeKay, said he expects a fierce debate.
Some ag groups aren’t currently on board. The Nebraska Farm Bureau and Nebraska Cattlemen support clear labeling, but not a ban. The governor’s office declined to provide the namesofanyorganizationssupportingtheeffort when asked by a Flatwater Free Press reporter.
Jenkins also favors labeling requirements that make the difference clear to consumers, but opposes a ban.
“In the good old United States of America, I think people should be able to compete, even if that threatens my business,” he said.
If it does pass, Nebraska could face legal questions. Florida, which passed a ban last year, is fighting off a lawsuit claiming the law is unconstitutional. Alabama also passed a ban last year.
“States are trying to ban an industry that is actually going to create tremendous jobs and opportunities for them,” said David Kaplan, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. “And they’re banning it even before there’s an industry – or the industry is just barely getting off the ground.”
Meat, grown in a bioreactor
Opponents like Pillen call it “lab-grown” and “bioreactor meat.”
Others call it “cultivated” or “cell-based” or “cultured” – and the industry notes that commercial production will happen in food production facilities, not laboratories.
Likewise, some don’t agree that protein products grown from cells should be called “meat” at all. Mark McHargue, president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau, said in a statement that they “should not be classified as meat.”
But unlike the plant-based imitations some fast-food chains have added to their menus, these products do originate from animals, thoughanimalsaren’tslaughteredintheprocess. Instead, scientists take cells from an egg or live animal like a chicken or cow. They put select cells into a bioreactor with liquid – imagine a metal fermenter like you might see in a brewery – and add nutrients like amino acids, vitamins and salt that mimic the environment in an animal’s body, according to researchers and companies making the products.
The cells multiply and eventually form a substance that can be “harvested” and shaped into something familiar like a ground meat or filet.
It’s like cooking – you’re combining different ingredients to reach the right texture and flavor, said Kaplan, the engineer at Tufts. Except this process must happen in a very controlled environment, he said, to ensure it’s high-quality and safe.
Few American families will likely consume it in 2025.
To date, only two cultivated meat products – both poultry – have made it through the U.S. approval process. Neither of those are intended for full-scale commercial release, said Suzi Gerber, executive director of industry lobbying group the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation. They were intended to generate excitement, to show what is possible.
“Cell-cultured” meat products are subject to the same federal regulations and oversight as products made from slaughtering animals, according to a 2023 federal directive. The U.S. DepartmentofAgriculturemustapproveproduct labels to ensure they’re not misbranded.
Gerber and others in the industry tout cultivated meat as part of a solution to climate change and a tool to address food insecurity for a growing global population.
“We do not envision a world where meat production ends,” Gerber said. “We envision a world where you can choose. We see cultivated meat as a complement to existing food systems.”
Some meat heavyweights seem to agree, or are at least hedging their bets. In recent years, major corporations like Cargill and Tyson have invested in it. According to the Good Food Institute, cell-cultured meat and seafood companies had raised $3.1 billion as of 2023, though fundraising drastically slowed that year.
In the last decade, technology has advanced and the cost of production has gone down, Kaplan said, and that will continue. He also sees future opportunities for agriculture in the new industry, in part by supplying raw materials to feed the bioreactors.
The biggest challenge, he said, is the scale-up.
“Right now there’s just not the infrastructure to have this field grow, to start to produce enough food to be in supermarkets for people to really purchase and then cook and try,” he said. “Until that infrastructure comes along, it’s going to be very slow, steady development.”
WashingtonPostfoodreporterandOmaha native Tim Carman agrees with that forecast. He finds the field compelling and fascinating. But after reporting on it, the 63-year-old doesn’t think he will see widespread availability in his lifetime.
“On the horizon I see nothing that’s going to compete with commodity beef from Nebraska or Iowa,” he said.
Nebraska eyes a ban
Pillen first took action last August, signing an executive order demanding that state agencies not procure lab-grown meat and that state contractors attest they won’t “discriminate” against traditional meat producers in favor of “laboratory or cultivated-meat producers.”
This session, senators have introduced at least two bills related to these products: a total ban and labeling requirements.
Iowa passed a similar labeling law last year, in part requiring any lab-grown or plant-based meat product that uses a word like “meat” or “burger” to also include a word like “cell-cultivated,” “lab-grown” or “veggie.”
If passed, Nebraska’s ban would add cell-cultured meat products to the state’s definition of an “adulterated food product,” putting it among food that’s unsafe or made from a diseased animal (DeKay said the ban wouldn’t cover plant-based products like the Beyond Burger).
Making, importing, distributing, promoting, displaying or selling a “cultivated-protein food product” would be a violation of the Nebraska Pure Food Act – which can result in an order to stop, or even a misdemeanor charge.
The industry Pillen is attempting to shield represents a significant chunk of Nebraska’s economy. In 2022, agricultural production and processing industries made up almost 11% of Nebraska’s total GDP, according to an analysis from the University of Arkansas. Cattle and calves were the state’s top agricultural commodity.
