Arizona House to vote on labeling restrictions for synthetic meat products

PHOENIX (CN) — An Arizona House committee approved a bill Monday that would prohibit meat-replacement companies from misleading consumers into believing their products are real meat. 

Senate Bill 1649, sponsored by Republican state Senator Ken Bennett of Prescott prohibits the labeling of any food not derived from livestock or poultry as meat. It also prohibits labels on those products from including terms “used or defined historically in reference to a specific meat food product or poultry product.” 

The bill includes meat replacements like soy and cell-cultured, lab-grown meat. It would allow the state's Department of Agriculture to impose a civil penalty of up to $1,000 on companies that violate the terms of the bill. 

It’s unclear if products advertised as black bean burgers or Impossible burgers would violate those terms, but the bill specifies that it applies to companies that intend to mislead customers. Last year, the Fifth Circuit tightened the scope of a similar law in Louisiana, affirming that companies must intentionally attempt to mislead customers to be penalized for the labels on their non-meat products. 

Bennett wasn’t in the committee meeting to explain his bill, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Sam Richard, lobbying for the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for the production of plant-based and lab-grown proteins, spoke against the bill during the public comment period. 

“It’s an essential tenet of the industry that my client works in to differentiate themselves from conventional sources of protein,” Richards told the committee. “Mislabeling or misrepresenting their products is antithetical to their marketing strategy and interest in being transparent to their customers.”

He said consumers know what they are looking for when they shop for alternative proteins, and that the government should trust consumers to make the right choices without intervening. 

He added that some terms may seem to be misleading, like the inside of a pistachio being referred to as the “meat,” though all consumers know that pistachios are not actually meat. 

All five Republicans on the committee voted in favor of giving the bill a do-pass recommendation. The four Democrats voted against it. 

“We should definitely keep an eye on this and any new technology, but I’m not convinced that any mislabeling is happening,” said Democratic state Representative Mariana Sandoval of Yuma. 

The bill passed a Senate vote in February on a Republican-supported party line vote. It will soon be up for a full House vote and, if approved, find itself on the governor’s desk for final approval. 

The bill’s mirror version, House Bill 2244, sponsored by Republican state Representative Quang Nguyen of Prescott, made it through a state Senate Natural Resources, Energy and Water committee in February. 

Duane Wulf, a professor of meat science at the University of Arizona, told the committee that meat labeling requirements are already specific enough to take care of any potential labeling confusion. He added that synthetic lab-grown meats aren’t yet commercially available at a large scale and aren’t being passed off anywhere as naturally-grown meat. 

Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association President Mike Gannuscio, also speaking to the Senate committee in February, said that the association supports the bill because it protects consumers from being misled. 

That version of the bill passed the Senate Rules Committee Monday afternoon, and is now pending a full Senate vote.

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