The Missouri House approved a bill that would ban companies from labeling lab-grown meat products or meat substitutes as meat (St. Louis Post Dispatch). The labeling proposal is included in House Committee Bill 16, which passed the House by a vote of 107 to 38 on April 26, 2018. Now before the state Senate, the legislation has a May 18 deadline to reach the governor’s desk to be signed. The bill is supported by the Missouri Farm Bureau, the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association, and the state’s pork producers, while companies that produce plant-based, meat-like products oppose the legislation.

If this bill is signed into law, Missouri would be the first state to address this issue. However, on the national level, as previously reported on this blog, the United States Cattlemen’s Association  filed a petition with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) requesting that the Agency undertake rulemaking on beef labeling to clarify for consumers the difference between beef derived from cattle and “beef” products created in a laboratory.

The popularity of plant-based meats is increasing. For example, we reported in September 2017, that retail sales of plant-based foods intended to replace animal products rose by 8.1 percent over the previous year, topping $3.1 billion in sales. As this trend continues, we expect to see more regulatory activity in this area and will continue to report on future developments.